The Elephant Grass of the Democratic Party

The hissy fits of the Democratic Party over the election victory of Donald Trump continue. If one pays strict attention to their whining, it all seems to be a cloak for inherent and clandestine fears based on emotion more so than pragmatism and reason.  It reminds me of how one of my uncle friends described being in Vietnam when I was between 11 and 12 years old (1973-74). He told me about how what he would never forget outside of the sounds of war, were the marshy fields he and his company would be dropped off in, feet tall above the head of Elephant grass.  He said these fields were packed with booby traps but what scared him most was not being able to see around him.  The tall grass in addition to the grown-man high ant mounds, concealed the unexpected, seeing that the Elephant grass was tall enough to hide an entire military detail ready for ambush.

I suspect that this is how the democrats feel.  As if they were dropped off in a field of Elephant grass, not know what the future holds in store for them.  Could it be they expect to be invalidated by Trump and the GOP? Could it be that they fear Trump will make good on his campaign promises and lead to the destruction of the Democratic Party for years to come? Or could it be it will show the US citizenry how democratic policy has placed America in its current predicament?

All are possibilities.  Let’s face it, no matter how democrats and the media try to paint Obama’s eight years as a success, math shows the opposite. The math, as pure science reveals the truth that politically the democrats are powerless and stuck in a destitute defensive posture. Thus their primary weapon is crying and/or attacking the incoming administration through mere emotional displacement. Jamil Smith attacks Trump on his “intellectual laziness” suggesting that this “may be the most dangerous thing about him,” and that “Vladimir Putin wanted Donald Trump to be presidentof the United States, and the Russian government deliberately tried to help him win the election.” Jamile Bouie suggest that “Trump is defined by his shameless disregard, and even disdain, for the bonds that hold political life together.” Or in the case of some, they simply stick to praise of Putin as being evidence of incompetence and dishonesty.  All unfounded and groundless allegations pure in rhetoric singularly.

All of these are just emotional invective.  These writers will never back up their words with tangible accomplishments of President Obama to compare these statements of rhetorical grandiose to purport the accuracy of their assertions. Never will they objectively examine real life measure of American success and economic improvement like the Housing Affordability Index for example. The Housing Affordability Index measures whether or not a typical U.S. family makes enough money to just to qualify for a mortgage loan on a typical home let alone buy one. But this will never be included in their writings because data indicates that US housing affordability is at its lowest point since the fourth quarter of 2008. This most likely is a consequence of stagnate wage growth that cannot keep up with increasing home prices.  

They may cite job creation as an indicator of Obama’s success but will go no further than the Whitehouse press statement to examine the fine details of the data, for if they did, as a new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton note, nearly 95%of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were part-time or temporary positions. I won’t even include that additional analysis of liberal media pundits will not note or question how many of these new jobs are being taken by people that already have a job or even two. In all accuracy, since Obama took office, there remains 1 million fewer workers, overall, working than before he took office (Another actor to consider when attempting to comprehend why US housing affordability is so low and wage growth so paralyzed).

In simple terms, although Obama did inherit an economic mess, his policies have led to deteriorating affordability in home ownership, a segment of the U.S. economy that traditionally has proffered parents with the best opportunity to safeguard a better future for their children. Instead, his Keynesian economic approach has added another obstacle for lower-income Americans regardless of race. I mean, the housing market bubble burst almost 10 years ago, yet sales and construction in this sector are well below their peaks in the early 2000s meaning the housing sector is stagnate along with wage growth.

Thus to abrogate the use of data, anything is not only open to vapid complaints by democrats but is also the fault of the man who has not even been sworn in as president yet.    This is the ultimate profile of the traumatized individual. This can be made even worse for progressive peace-loving democrats when we include Obama’s foreign policy record.

When Obama took office he vowed to end the war in Afghanistan.  This too has not happened and to use the same language pundits use to describe the statements of Trump, was a lie.  Not only has he increased military operations in Afghanistan, he has dropped more bombs, employed more drone killings than Bush, and has killed inordinate more innocent civilian in the country when compared to his predecessor. Then there is Libya and Yemen. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winning PresidentAdministration has sold more weapons than any other American president since World War II, totaling plus $200 billion from 2008 to 2015. Sales to Saudi Arabia alone has swollen to $115 billion. Now he has sent US Special Forces to Lithuania to saber rattle on the Russian border.

Democrats and in particular Obama, really do see Donald Trump’s election victory as a personal repudiation of his pluralistic and globalist agenda and legacy. Add to this that democrats need to not only figure out how to have policy messages that include all instead of dividing the nation in to mutually exclusive voting blocs based on labels and message of race, gender and sexuality, they also have to figure out how to formulate new integrative domestic policies with how to communicates those policies with a single unified message for all (and this can’t be done by just speaking at colleges, universities, unions and big cities).

The democrats understand that what they have to stand on are Obama’s past eight years and the political agenda of the democratic elite.  While murder rates in traditionally democratic cities like Chicago, Memphis, Baltimore and DC are out of the atmosphere, they are doubling down. By some estimates, the Obama Administration and sanctuary cities and their mayor including in NYC, San Francisco and Chicago spend around $113 billion on illegal aliens annually but they ignore that there are U.S. citizens that can use these funds including but not limited to homeless veterans, our inner cities, our youth and/or rural areas, all being poor black and white folk alike.

Yes the Democrats have their own battle of Ia Drang Valley and they cannot see for the Elephant grass and are taking fire from all sides yet responding by shooting in all directions and at anything that moves from a Simon & Schuster book deal for Milo Yiannopoulos, to theHBCU band from Talladega College performing at the inauguration to GM CEO Mary Barra being appointed to Trump’s business Advisory council (yet don't mention how Obama pimped US tax payers for GM), to Putin, WikiLeaks and so-called ‘fake news’. They have been dropped off in the middle of their own Landing Zone (LZ) X-ray and do not know what to do. They never look at themselves to determine if their battle plan was defective yet instead blame everything else. But now they have run out of replacement parts for the Iroquois “Huey” helicopters that carried them into battle and are running out of ammunition and have few if any reinforcements arriving for some time. The Battle of the Ia Drang Valley was one of the most noteworthy battles of the Vietnam war, likewise, the battle the Democrats have on their hands after the 2016 presidential election loss, will be just as significant.