(Feb. 7) All those pundits saying the Iowa caucus fiasco suddenly makes the Democrats weak for the fall election against President Trump are wrong — there was nothing sudden about their weakness at all.
Even before Iowa, this Democratic field was embarrassingly weak. It is woefully lacking in stature, accomplishments, competence, and salable political philosophy. Most of its major contenders are either too old or too young. And now, the national party infrastructure’s obvious disarray only exacerbates these problems.
Consider front-runner Bernie Sanders. His popularity with historically illiterate, willfully ignorant millennials aside, he would be a joke as a general election candidate in any other year. He’s not just a “social democrat” — he’s spent decades as an open sympathizer for communist causes. One small improvement for veterans aside, his legislative achievements in 30 years are nearly nil. By Election Day, he’ll be 79 years old and a recent heart attack survivor.
Really, no one older than 75 should ever be elected to a first term as president: The chances for destabilizing health problems are just too great. Joe Biden (now 77) and Michael Bloomberg (78 next week) also are too old. Biden has had intermittent health problems (once nearly deadly) for more than 30 years. He also is fated never to escape ethics questions about his failure to recuse himself from policy involving Ukraine. Bloomberg has had heart irregularities.
Aside from age and health, Bloomberg’s nanny-state extremism and $5 trillion tax hike plan will make him anathema to Middle America. Elizabeth Warren is a serial fibber proposing to kill private health insurance and a cheap-shot artist to boot. Amy Klobuchar was little-known nationally until — well, she’s still little-known, let’s be honest. For all of her apparent advantages over the others, she seems to have serious impulse-control issues: Her reportedly abusive treatment of employees has resulted in the single highest rate of staff turnover in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the very idea of Pete Buttigieg as president is ludicrous….
[The full column is here.]
