There is a narrative shift taking place in America when it comes to the immediate fortunes of our nation’s two major political parties …
For months, discussion about the upcoming midterm congressional elections has centered around a so-called blue wave which would ostensibly break in November and wash away “Republican” control of the U.S. congress. Democrats are hoping the 2018 midterms will reverse the results of the 2010 wave election – in which a nascent Tea Party movement delivered control of the U.S. House of Representatives to the GOP (for whatever that has been worth).
Is the minority party’s optimism well-founded?
At the moment … not really.
As we noted earlier this week in this piece, several factors are conspiring to dramatically dim Democrats’ prospects ahead of the 2018 elections.
Nevertheless, three aging Democratic leaders are furiously plotting in anticipation of the potential power struggle that would ensue if the party does manage to regain control of the House. One of them? U.S. congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.
Clyburn, 78, appears to have mixed messages about being speaker of the U.S. House. On the one hand, he spoke this week of representing a “bridge” between the old guard Democrats like himself (and liberal leader Nancy Pelosi) and the next generation of younger party officials.
Wait … a bridge?
Like the notorious “Clyburn Connector” – a proposed $182 million bridge that was to have spanned Lake Marion between the rural towns of Lone Star and Rimini, S.C.?
Because that bridge was never built.
And if geriatric and millennial liberal politicians keep scaring away younger progressives with their borderline fascist rhetoric, this “bridge” of which Clyburn speaks won’t be built either …
Of course the flip side of Clyburn’s contemplated speakership has nothing to do with bridge-building and everything to do with him assuming a “transformative” role – one aimed at empowering “young African Americans who still feel … take(n) for granted.”
Wait … didn’t a middle-aged black man just spend eight years as president?
Yes, he did.
We’re going to do our readers the courtesy of skipping over this rhetorical divisiveness, though, and head straight to the heavy-handed “or else” component of Clyburn’s campaign for speaker … because in contemporary America, the far left always accompanies their rhetoric with an “or else.”
According to reporters Emma Dumain and William Douglas of McClatchy, Clyburn’s supporters in the congressional black caucus appear perfectly willing to hold the Democratic speakership hostage unless their man gets the gavel.
“You cannot get to 218 (votes) to be speaker without the Black Caucus,” U.S. congressman Cedric Richmond of Louisiana told the two reporters. “If we hold, you cannot get the speakership without us. I’m just doing math right now, you can’t get there without the Black Caucus.”
Ah, “unity.”
Richmond made additional national news this week by announcing his opposition to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) proposal that would weaken the corrosive influence of so-called “super-delegates” on the party’s presidential nominating process – claiming the proposed changes would “disenfranchise elected officials.”
Wow …
In other words, he wants to keep rigging the party’s nomination.
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[/timed-content-server]These are the leaders of the Democratic Party, people: Divisive, bought-and-paid-for bullies willing to hold their own party hostage to obtain power.
And Clyburn seemed to endorse Richmond’s threat, telling the McClatchy reporters there was “no question” that a “pathway” exists to him becoming the first black speaker in American history.
Sad …
Are these really the hands into which America’s progressives wish to place their collective future? Because it seems to us that these Democratic leaders have no real interest in them or their plight. They just want power.
Like liberal former U.S. speaker John Boehner salivating over the swelling Tea Party wave eight years ago, these creatures of Washington, D.C. are simply watching the tides wax and wane in the hopes of advancing their positions.
They don’t care about us … all they care about is the influential interests filling their campaign accounts (and the dark money accounts used to take out their enemies). Their interest in the average American citizens extends only insofar as they can make us dependent … or pay for others’ dependency.
All while fooling us into believing they care …
Anyway, at this point we believe the rumored “blue wave” is likely to be a wash … with Democrats likely to pick up a few seats in the House but not nearly enough to retake control of the chamber.
Of course that could change …
One thing is clear, though: If the Democrats do manage to wrestle control of the House this fall, Clyburn and his “Dividerers” have an ultimatum at the ready.
Because again, it is their way “or else.”
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