Obama Destroys the Democrat Party

            As we observe the passing of President Barack Obama’s 8 years in office, an ending he and the media are determined to prolong and sentimentalize, even as the rest of us cannot wait to be rid of him, it is fitting to examine not so much the damage he has done to the country, which is substantial, but rather to his own party, the Democrat Party. For all the misery he has unleashed upon the nation and world, some of it can at least be reversed. But by undermining the Democrat Party, he has performed unwittingly a singular act of charity to his fellow countrymen that may be more permanent than his destructive policies as President.  For Obama has transformed a dominant, national party that leaned left into a fringe, hard left, political operation with little appeal beyond urban centers and the college campus. In so doing he has created a Democrat Party completely out of touch with mainstream American values, interests - and voters.

            Obama campaigned vigorously for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, realizing how fragile his “legacy” was without a Democrat victory.  He understood that his policies and programs, generally imposed by executive order and without Congressional support, were vulnerable to a non-sympathetic successor.  As he lived by the pen and phone, so could his agenda die by the very same pen and phone of President Donald J. Trump.  He thusly engaged in heroic efforts to salvage his legacy by procuring a victory for a deeply flawed candidate, which ultimately failed. Despite his relative personal popularity, his policies were another matter.  And so even historically reliable blue states, the great “blue wall,” Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, fell before the Trump juggernaut.  The Democrats were left holding the West Coast and a narrow strip in the Northeast and little else, a major setback for Obama and the Democrats, for which Obama, as is typical, refused to take responsibility.

            Under Obama, the Democrat Party has been turned over to fanatics like him, obsessed with identity politics, “global warming,” and LGBT rights.  It is a party that will fight for Syrian Muslim refugees, sanctuary cities, amnesty, transgendered bathrooms, and believes that the gravest threat facing the nation is “climate change,” hardly compelling issues for working Americans.  It is a party in conflict with virtually all aspects of the American enterprise, including its constitution, history, the free market, and other critical institutions.  Indeed, the party of Jefferson, the party of the workingman, has become the party of campus radicals and urban leftists, the party of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, contemptuous of common sense and huge swaths of the electorate, in particular, the white working class, formerly the backbone of the Democrat Party.  Obama and his Democrats had no use for the poor saps in the sticks and smeared them as neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  Hillary famously referred to them as “deplorables.”

            Since Obama began his two terms, the Democrats have lost a net of 1,042 state and federal posts including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships, and the presidency.   As bad as it has been at the national level where Republicans now enjoy a monopoly on federal power, it is at the state and local level where the devastation of the Democrat Party has been most granular.  The Republicans now hold 33 governorships compared to 17 for the Democrats.  In 2009, Dems held 28 governorships to 22 for Republicans. The GOP controls 68 State Legislatures compared with 31 for the Democrats.  Republicans hold a trifecta with both state houses and governor in 25 states compared with only five for the Democrats.  The GOP controls 58% of total state seats compared to 42% for Democrats.  And Hillary won less than 15% of US counties.

            The Democrat Party is no longer a national party.   It is extinct in the south, and barely breathing in the Rust Belt, Corn Belt, and Great Plains States.  It flourishes in the radicalized, racialized environment of cities and academia where its victimhood-grievance themes play well as do open-borders, transnationalism, and loathing for traditional values and religion.  In yet another move indicative of their shift to the hard left despite their election losses, Democrats plan to nominate radical leftist, anti-Semite, and former nation of Islam member Keith X Ellison, to lead the party.  Obama has not transformed America as much as he has transformed his party.

            Obama, who spent 20 years in the racist church of Jeremiah Wright and cut his teeth with domestic terrorists Bill Ayres and Bernadette Dorn and Hamas mouthpiece Rashid Khalidi, has taken their anti-American radicalism to heart and injected it into the Democrat party.  In so doing, he has marginalized the party and presided over its self-destruction. Good riddance.

January 2017

Brief Bio: Richard Moss MD is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist who resides in Jasper IN.  Find more of his essays and blog posts at exodusmd.com.  Also find him on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.