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Mostly, the Socialists ... uhh, I Mean, DEMOCRATS ... Whiffed in Miami

July 2, 2019 - 7:00am

New York City Mayor and presidential hopeful Bill DeBlasio took time from his departure schedule from South Florida following his debate performance Wednesday night to visit with airport workers. 

Speaking before a large group of striking laborers, in many ways he became perfectly emblematic of his fellow Democratic debaters. Serving as their avatar was not intentional, nor was it meant to be complimentary.

Over the course of two consecutive nights Miami was the stage for 20 candidates to square off and do their best to distinguish themselves in a very crowded field. Declarations were made, Spanish was invoked freely, and in the Sunshine State handouts were promised by the snow-shovelful. Perplexing promises rained down from the podium and denials about the economy were nearly as commonplace as the bickering.

This is not as easy of a slog as the Democrats expected. The prior months have seen their messaging become growingly extreme. So far, pledging massive giveaway programs, or eliminating private health insurance, and embracing socialism have not paved the way to an easy defeat of Donald Trump. The DNC has recently taken out its second line of credit within a month, to help it pay for the coming national convention as it is operating in the red. The GOP meanwhile has more cash on hand from donations, has no standing debt, and after Donald Trump officially announced he would run for reelection, he hauled in $24 million -- in one day!

While the press insists the nation has turned away from this administration, the cold facts seem to rebut that claim. And we did not see a calm force from White House hopefuls last week.

DeBlasio, after making himself noticed on the dais by becoming one of the more obnoxious participants, followed the lead of many of the candidates, making a personal appearance in the area. 

Elizabeth Warren made a spectacle of herself when she visited the Homestead immigrant detention center Tuesday. She was making accusations of the living conditions inside a facility she had not entered, invoking the lie of children sleeping in cages on the floors (the cage myth was repeated often on both nights). She also made a staggering comment that was the apex in a lack of self-awareness.

Through her foghorn, Warren made a seemingly passionate plea for funding to be provided for the mounting issues the country is facing at the borders. It sure sounded heartfelt, until you realized that the evening prior, there had been a vote in the Senate about that very issue -- except Warren missed the vote in order to go out and draw attention to herself on the trail. That's how important the issue was to her.

Notably missing from much of the four hours of teed-up questions was any mention of the Venezuelan crisis. An issue of sharp interest for many in the Miami area -- whether as natives from the impoverished land, or Cuban expats angry over that country’s involvement in propping up the totalitarian government -- went unchallenged by those debating. This is because the Democrats are largely in opposition to the Trump administration attempting to ease democracy back into Venezuela. The socialism-embracing blue party wouldn't dare stir the pot among the Latino audience with that one.

Then there was DeBlasio at Miami International. He was standing in front of a gathered SEIU crowd, speaking with a microphone. And while the throng of union workers were responding appropriately to his taglines, he then uttered the poison pill of a quote -- “Hasta la victoria siempre!” I do not care how supportive of a union crowd you may think you have, quoting the butcher of Havana, Che Guevara, to a roomful of Cuban-Americans is NOT the way to go. 

Even DeBlasio’s wan excuse and apology -- claiming not to know those were words directly associated with Castro’s famous henchman -- is chased off by facts. He was a supporter of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1980s, and more than that in college he actually studied Latin American politics while at Columbia. He has to have known exactly what he was saying to the wrong audience.

But this encapsulates the Democratic takeover of South Florida last week. It was filled with days of feigned expertise, pandering linguistics, self-aggrandizing photo-ops, and distemper on display under the stage lights. If anyone came away looking better following the show, it was the candidates who previously had received little exposure and distinguished themselves by appearing composed.

None of them came off as a charismatic leader, and many left an impression quite the opposite of endearing. Welcome to the campaign cycle everyone -- just 16 more months of this to go.

Brad Slager, a Fort Lauderdale freelance writer, wrote this story exclusively for Sunshine State News. He writes on politics and the industry and his stories appear in such publications as RedState and The Federalist.

Comments

super

simple concept, vote for who you think will do the best job for our country and who you think espouses the fundamental values of the USA best. All the rest is just partisan politics and rhetoric...

Stupid headline! The most popular governmental programs in the U.S. are socialistic, e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, the Veterans' Administration and G.I Bill, the public school system and land grant universities, the interstate highway system ... and on and on and on. Politically, this IS a social democratic country with, on the political spectrum, a left-of-center population. Apparently, to some, ignorance is bliss.

The infrastructure of society is not socialism. This is a confusion that many uneducated leftists can't seem to grasp. It is physically impossible for each person in your neighborhood to have their own road or sidewalk that goes from their home to the grocery store. Likewise, it is impossible for each person in your neighborhood to have their own school, their own firetruck, their own ambulance, their own university, etcetera, etcetera... A public/shared infrastructure is absolutely necessary for a society to exist. However, society is not socialism. I realize the words have a relationship and are spelled similarly, but too often they are confused as being equals by uneducated leftists.

Note how many of those programs they listed here are complete failures. And they tour those as somehow wonderful examples of their utopian system.

Absolutely correct. I've had too many idiot leftists tell me that my shared street makes us socialist.

I would agree that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid are socialist, but VA, GI Bill are the equivalent of employee benefits and the public school system and roads are public services and public works. Yes, they can be provided privately or through toll-based systems, but an aspect of good government is providing services and infrastructure. This is not the same as providing cash payments, subsidies or direct reimbursement of medical costs. Even in the more libertarian era of our founding, taxes were collected to pay for public offices and services were provided.

SS is a benefit as well, paid in, but not paid out proportionately, mostly illegally raided by the legislature to fund other things as well. Most Medicare for all models are based on healthcare as a result of a tax. It is really no different than paying your healthcare premium now, except in most cases it would be better coverage, better prices and more efficiency. For example in Scotland, they pay 3% of their wages up to $100 monthly for healthcare, but not more than that. The biggest difference? They don't have to fund the $500 billion dollar a year middle man, called the insurance industry. Well, you might say, this makes sense, why haven't they entertained this in the past like every other industrialized nation in the world? The insurance industry pays $50 billion dollars annually in the form of their lobby to ensure things stay exactly the same, just like the healthcare lobby, the big pharma lobby, power companies, big oil, etc., etc., etc. Now, you have the rest of the story...

I hope you meant to say "health insurance industry" and not "insurance industry" as there is a huge difference. With the word "health" missing, your statement is easily refuted.

what other insurance industry would he be talking about in a medical context?

The most important thing is that the scum DNC candidate is defeated. We have worked so hard to improve our economy. We don't need another DNC national socialist to screw it up again.

So, the draft-dodger, the pathological liar, the serial cheater and adulterer, the corrupt con man, and the phoney fraudster currently occupying the White House doesn't rise to the level of "scum" in terms of your political and historical expertise ???

Slick Willie is no longer in the White House.

may the best person win...for me, anyone but Trump...

I will enthusiastically be supporting the President in 2020.

Likewise. We've finally got a guy in the White House that knows how to keep our economy strong - exactly what America needs. But we've also got a guy who's been so successful in private business that he gets no personal financial benefit (or financial motivation) out of being president - he gives his salary to charity. We are so blessed to have him and not Hillary.

as is your right Bob. This is America, may the best candidate win. Hopefully, that will be the best person as well...

Call them the democrats, the socialists, the democratic socialists, the national socialists, they're all the exact same thing.

From the moment Trump announced he was running for POTUS forward the socialists/democrats/@ss clowns/.../.../...or whatever their flavor of the day name may be have been nothing but an embarassing pestilence upon our great nation. The fools keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hard hitting red wave avalanche -landslide in 2020 and quite likely banishing themselves from relevancy for many election cycles to come.

I doubt that Democrats will suffer a defeat of that magnitude (but we can hold out hope for it). I think the President is doing an excellent job.

I doubt that Democrats will suffer a defeat of that magnitude (but we can hold out hope for it). I think the President is doing an excellent job.

"the President is doing an excellent job" - And people see this. The president will be reelected with a sizable majority of the popular vote and the electoral college vote. California and New York probably won't swing around, but we can deal with that. The economy is rightfully number one on people's list. Some of the economic moves our president has made are simply common sense. The democrat candidates allow their ideologies take precedence over the economy, and the voters know it.

The "pestilence" is Trump, his family, his enablers, and his cult of deplorable supporters.

I do not consider myself or those who agree with me about Trump to be deplorable.

When you "Send in the Clowns",.. please be considerate enough to "pack them in their "Little Clown Car",... AND TAKE THEM AWAY ! ! !

Yep ....Pretty much a “ Vote for Me” clown show ....

Tacky name calling. It's sort of the equivalent of calling Republicans right-wing terrorists. I don't believe either apply and shame on those who resort to such name calling. You are part of the problem in our country - lack of thoughtful discourse reduced to very mean name calling. I reject your thinking about Democrats and likewise those who would label Republicans in similarly vile and unpatriotic terms.

The party has been courting socialism for months now, verbally and otherwise. How is it wrong for me to ascribe a term towards them that they have embraced for themselves?

there are like 3 candidates who have embraced the title of "democratic socialist", the rest just ascribe to some form of universal healthcare and education assistance. Every major democracy in the world has these same gov't rights except the US, so I guess you are saying that these democracies like, England, France, Canada, Finland, Japan, etc. are all socialist countries? Of course they are not, but this has become the rallying cry of your party of extremists who spews propaganda to the uneducated proletariat... Fortunately, most people just know better...

I would say that it is a matter of degree how socialist a country is. So yes, those European countries most definitely are socialist (in some ways, less socialist than in the 70s, before it became obvious that socialism is unaffordable and wrong-headed - as Margaret Thatcher put it, "The problem with spending other people's money is that eventually, you run out of money."). I would say that the US has socialist programs, but is less socialist than those countries and that none of these countries is as absurdly mismanaged as the communist former Soviet Union or the deplorable regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. I think that the uneducated proletariat is a bit savvier than you give them credit for. There can be no doubt that Democrats this year have fully embraced the socialism Obama made popular.

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