For those of you wearing your MAGA hats and sporting your "Trump 2020" bumper stickers, I'm sorry to disappoint you--this article isn't meant to pillory Hillary or insinuate that if Democrats nominate her again in 2020 then that will seal another victory for Trump. Instead, I'd like to shed some light on how the left, and the Democratic Party overall, is moving away from (read: further to the left) Hillary Clinton and how that is definitely not a good thing.
It's no secret that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were the most and second-most unfavorable presidential candidates in history, respectively. But, according to a Gallup poll through December of 2017, Hillary Clinton's favorability has continued to plummet.
Hillary has attributed several factors to her loss in her memoir, "What Happened," but she recently added the fact that she's a capitalist to the list by elucidating on what she mentioned in Fortune magazine, saying that, "The reputation of capitalism is pretty much in tatters for young people."
Not to mention the fact that she has a bit of a reputation as a war hawk. The New York Times described her hawkish nature, during her 2016 presidential campaign, as setting her apart from any of her Democratic challengers, as well as the two Republicans left in the primary at the time. Saying that, "For all their bluster about bombing the Islamic State into oblivion, neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has."
But what I believe to be the catalyst in the dramatic leftward shift of the current Democratic Party is one in which Hillary herself is likely to agree with: Bernie Sanders.
Hillary, in "What Happened," made sure to include the campaign of the self-described socialist as a major factor in her loss. An argument that I have made in the past, that Hillary herself made in her book, is that Bernie is not a Democrat. She writes,"That's not a smear, that's what he says, he didn't get into
the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to
disrupt the Democratic Party."
And disrupt the party he has.
The political organization, Democratic Socialists of America (what Bernie ran as), has seen an uptick of up to 37,000 dues-paying members, from 8,000 since the election of President Trump in November 2016. That's nearly a 500% increase in membership in less than two years.
Now, in Pennsylvania alone, four self-proclaimed socialists won their respective Democratic primaries for the state legislature. With one of the victors saying, "What [we're] leaning toward is what the Democratic party is only giving
lip service to. This is where we stand, (some Democrats)
say, but they won't run candidates who are unashamed standing there and
unashamed of that agenda."
The agenda that she's referring to is the agenda of socialism.
This is what the Democratic Party has become. From running a self-described capitalist in 2016, to a party where anyone who hopes to have a chance at being nominated in 2020 has to be a self-described socialist.
Not only is that a sudden change, but a scary one as well. A party that is embracing a man who has said that the American Dream can only be achieved in places like Venezuela, a country where its citizens are so starved that they're forced into eating emaciated zoo animals, is not a party that I want in charge of our wonderful country.
I can only hope that the Bernie Effect is nothing more than a temporary experimental phase and that (I can't believe I'm saying this) the Democratic Party will run candidates that have more in common with Hillary in the future.
