Ronald Radosh's Blog

There is a good chance that the Republican nomination will come down to either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. (See the analysis by Scott Brand in National Journal and by Jason Horowitz in The New York Times.­) Both men, of course, have their strong and weak points, but for an election as important as 2016, a question that cannot be ignored is which candidate is the most electable. Not one of the goals of conservatives can be met without a Republican president, unless Republicans have enough votes in the Senate to overturn a veto by Hillary Clinton.

As William F. Buckley Jr. once advised, conservatives need to support the most conservative candidate who can actually win.  The candidate who best meets that goal is Marco Rubio. I think the arguments made by conservative political analyst Henry Olson back in October of 2014 still hold true. Here is Olson’s key point:

The number of self-described conservatives has remained relatively constant for more than 40 years: Depending on the poll and the year, it has fluctuated between 33 and 40 percent. The number of self-described Republicans has moved more significantly, but it has never risen above 33 percent for more than a year. Unlike victory in Texas, victory nationwide requires the GOP nominee to attract significant numbers of self-described moderate independents.

In other words, to win, a Republican candidate must attract voters who lean conservative but are not part of the conservative movement, and independents dissatisfied with the reign of Barack Obama.   Cruz obviously believes that the majority of the country is conservative, and if he runs on the principles espoused by the Republican base, these voters will carry him to victory. One Republican argued back in 1967 that to win, Republicans needed a coalition that included many more than the most conservative base voters.  That Republican was Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan told conservatives the hard truths:

We cannot offer a narrow sectarian party in which all must swear allegiance to prescribed commandments. Such a party can be highly disciplined, but it does not win elections. This kind of party soon disappears in a blaze of glorious defeat, and it never puts into practice its basic tenets, no matter how noble they may be.

Obviously, Cruz disagrees, and believes that the tactics he followed in the fight against Obamacare and against Planned Parenthood is proof that he can win the presidency with the support of the base.  It’s clear, however, the support of the base will not be enough.  To win, the Republican candidate will have to attract self-proclaimed moderates as well as conservative-leaning independents. They will also attract some remaining centrist Democrats dismayed about how left their party has become. These voters are more likely to pull the lever for Rubio than Cruz.

The two men, of course, have many things in common. They are both 44, both Latino, and their parents are both Cuban emigres. Both, as we have seen from the Republican debates, are quick on their feet, and expert debaters. But after that, the two diverge. Rubio won as a Tea Party favorite, but put off conservatives whose main concern is immigration restriction rather than immigration reform. Cruz has the support of these Republicans, and also social conservatives, who would choose him rather than Rubio. That helps Cruz with the base, but does not help with independents and moderates.

I believe that Rubio, whose personal story resonates and moves many voters, is likely to gain more independents and even Democrats who for good reason do not trust Hillary Clinton.  Clinton will claim expertise on foreign policy because of her years as Secretary of State, but Rubio will be able to challenge her record. We have already seen an example of this in his recent exchange with Charlie Rose about Benghazi. Watch how tough and unflappable Rubio is as he demolishes Rose with one blow after another. Just imagine Rubio doing the same with Hillary Clinton on the debate stage.

Finally, if Rubio becomes the GOP’s candidate, he is likely to deliver Florida with its crucial Electoral College votes. If conservatives do not want to see Hillary  Clinton as President of the United States, they should carefully consider who can beat her in November, 2016.

Progressive American Jews who claim to be pro-Zionist and pro-Israel yet concentrate their writing and public activities on condemning Israel are spreading an idea which is gaining legitimacy and picking up steam.

Over the weekend, an example of this trend appeared in an op-ed featured in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. It was written by two academics from elite institutions: Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University, and Glen Weyl, an assistant professor of law and economics at the University of Chicago.

The title of their op-ed says it all:

We Are Lifelong Zionists. Here’s Why We’ve Chosen to Boycott Israel.

They follow a usual trope. The Jewish writer first proclaims that he has always supported Israel and has the best interests of Israel at heart. Yet the professors’ prescription is a complete boycott of Israel — including all of its products and the withdrawal of all U.S. aid and diplomatic support — and support of boycotts and divestitures from the Israeli economy.

Their motivation, they tell us,  is their “love for Israel and a desire to save it”:

Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust.

They are disappointed. One problem is that they don’t love Israel as it exists today; they love the socialist Israel of yesteryear when Histadrut ran the economy, the Kibbutz was flourishing, and the Labor Party ran the country. But now Israel has betrayed them by moving to privatization and away from collectivism — and by becoming remarkably prosperous.

But Israel’s really egregious crime is that it has allowed itself to exist by taking “undemocratic” measures —  i.e., occupying the West Bank and Gaza and denying “basic rights” to all the Palestinian people.

Their conclusion: American “progressive” Jews — their own definition of the only moral and decent American Jews — can no longer support a state that denies a people their legitimate rights. This follows with their comparison of Israel with apartheid-era South Africa, which in turn has made Israel into a pariah state.

That is why, they believe, “violence like the recent wave of attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank” takes place and has become normal.

Their effort to save Israel from itself might lead them down the path taken by the footsteps of the late historian Tony Judt, who wrote columns in The London Review of Books about his disenchantment with Israel, and who advocated a bi-national state instead of a two-state solution — a “solution” that would do away with the Jewish state altogether.

A phenomenon among progressive American Jews who claim to be pro-Zionist and pro-Israel, but who concentrate their writing and public activities on condemning Israel, is gaining legitimacy and picking up steam.

Over the weekend, an example of this trend appeared in an op-ed featured in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post, written by two academics from elite institutions of higher learning; Prof. Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University, and Prof. Glen Weyl, an assistant professor of law and economics at the University of Chicago. The title of their op-ed says it all:

“We Are Lifelong Zionists. Here’s Why We’ve Chosen to Boycott Israel.

They follow a usual trope. The Jewish writer first proclaims that he has always supported Israel, and has the best interests of Israel at heart. In this case, the professors prescription is to call  for a complete boycott of Israel — including all of its products, the withdrawal of all U.S. aid and diplomatic support and support of boycotts and divestitures from the Israeli economy. Their motivation, they tell us,  is their “love for Israel and a desire to save it.” In addition:

Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust.

They are disappointed. One problem is that they don’t love Israel as it exists today, but the Socialist Israel of yesteryear, when Histradut ran the economy, the Kibbutz was flourishing, and the Labor Party ran the country. But now, Israel has betrayed them, moving to privatization, away from collectivism, and becoming prosperous.

But Israel’s really egregious crime is that it has allowed itself to exist by taking “undemocratic” measures; i.e., occupying the West Bank and Gaza and denying “basic rights” to all the Palestinian people. Their conclusion: American “progressive” Jews—their own definition of the only moral and decent American Jews—can no longer support a state that denies a people their legitimate rights.  This follows with their comparison of Israel with apartheid era South Africa, which in turn has made Israel into a “pariah” state. And that is why, they believe, “violence like the recent wave of attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank” take place and have become normal.

Their effort to save Israel from itself might lead them down the path taken by the footsteps of the late historian Tony Judt who wrote columns in The London Review of Books about his disenchantment with Israel, and who advocated a bi-national state instead of a two-state solution, a “solution” that would do away with the Jewish state altogether.

The Professors argue that with its Iron Dome system to protect it, and Israel no longer facing any external existential threats, the Israelis can afford to give the Palestinians what they want. [Somehow, they fail to mention Iran]  For them only one thing threatens Israel- “the occupation,” and as one leftist friend of mine always argues, it is “Bibi’s leadership and the settlements which are the only existential threat to Israel.” This wishful thinking is reminiscent of the American left’s claim that if only the United States stopped its evil imperial moves to gain complete hegemony everywhere on the globe, the world would be a peaceful place.

Missing from their analysis is the Palestinian side of the equation.  Palestinian leadership rejected serious Israeli offers for a two state solution many times, the latest being the magnanimous offer of Ehud Olmert to Mahmout Abbas in 2008. When Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister,  Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. The result was that Hamas took it over, and has used it as a base to attack Israel ever since.  Then there is the Palestinian culture of anti-Semitism, its continual dehumanization of Jews, and the celebration of those who attack Israel and Israelis by the Palestinian Authority. Without a negotiated settlement, a reasonable person could understand why Israel would be reluctant to give up the West Bank. The authors do not even consider what would happen if Hamas and jihadists would use the West Bank as a staging point for rocket attacks on Tel Aviv.  Apparently, this did not occur to them.

With the latest Palestinian efforts to kill Jews either with knives or by ramming automobiles into Israeli citizens, you would think Jews who are concerned with the fate of their brethren in the Jewish State would condemn these barbaric acts, and express solidarity with Israel as its police and security forces do what little they can to minimize them.

It’s the old story, as Matthew M. Hausman puts it in an op-ed for Israel International News. They excuse “their attachment to a political ideology that excuses Jew-hatred and radical Islam with trite homilies about the evils of colonialism,” and they regard Israel “as a colonial creation” and ignore the actions taken by Islamists in their long jihad against Western civilization. The progressives, like our two academics, end up supporting policies threatening Jewish survival, echoing constantly the false Palestinian narrative that the evils that began with the Nakbah, and Israel’s very creation.

I leave a comment on this to David Horovitz, editor of The Times of Israel. He takes up the errant belief that because Israel is strong, it is up to Israel to give the Palestinians independence and not stymie them:

But step back a little — to a perspective that includes Hamas, the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East, the threat posed directly by an emboldened Iran and via its terrorist proxies, the anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel rampant across this region — and it should be obvious that a miscalculation by “strong” Israel would quickly render it untenably weak and vulnerable. We might get better international media coverage, but we also might face destruction; Israelis aren’t about to vote for that.

The two professors put the blame for failure of peace between Palestinians and Israelis on Israel alone.  Could it be, that in fact, the Palestinians continually prove  they do not want a peace partner? The truth is, as Edward Alexander writes in his most important book, Jews Against Themselves,   their case “omits history altogether, distorts evidence, and omits context.”

We can only expect more of the mainstream media to come up with similar articles in the days to come. It will hardly surprise anyone that a similar case will soon be made in the op-ed pages of The New York Times and other mainstream newspapers, whose editors do not want to be upstaged by The Washington Post. After all, there seems to be plenty of leftist anti-Israel Jews from whom they can pick.

I don’t expect Bernie Sanders to become the Democrats’ nominee, but what he will accomplish is to popularize socialism in the United States. Some are asking if it hasn’t already arrived on our shores. As Bill Maher said on his HBO program, “most Americans don’t realize we’re already socialist,” and in his New York Times column, Timothy Egan argues that the United States system is actually a blend of capitalism and socialism — what the late historian Martin J. Sklar called “the mix.”  As Egan writes,  “libraries and fire departments are socialist institutions,” as is the Interstate Highway System “created by Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

What Sanders favors is something else  – a government that through high taxes on the wealthy and even the middle-class would finance all the huge government entitlements he favors. Sanders has announced that he is going to give a speech defining what he means by socialism, but in the meantime he  explained socialism in this way to one woman at an Iowa meeting:

 [Americans] may not know that there are countries all over the world, whether its Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the UK, who on and off have had Democratic Socialist governments and they may not be familiar with some of the very positive policies those governments have developed for the middle class and working families…To me, democratic socialism means democracy, it means creating a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthiest. When you go to your public library or you call your police or fire department … these are socialist institutions.

Actually, the problem with our country today, as Ronald W. Dworkin explains in an important essay in The American Interest, is that we have what the Tea Party calls a system of “crony capitalism,” and what the left calls “corporate welfare.” Our system might have elements of socialism within capitalism, but now, big government and big business have become so merged that we have more of a statist system than a truly free-market and democratic one.  Dworkin argues that in some ways this is analogous to features of feudalism, in that regulations (read guilds) make it harder to gain entry into many fields, entrepreneurship and productivity decline and wages stagnate.  The groups that benefit are the government and big industry and those attached to them. “The underlying spirit of democracy,” Dworkin writes, “is thus smothered one citizen at a time.” On the other hand, he says, throwing out capitalism and instituting full socialism means “risking the destruction of both democracy and wealth.”

That is why the siren call of socialism as an American goal is so dangerous, especially since half the population according to polls say they would vote for a socialist running for the highest office in our land, and about 47 percent of Americans believe socialism would be good for our country.

Decades ago, the late socialist leader Michael Harrington used to say that there was a “socialist caucus in Congress,” referring to the few rather obvious House members who were far to the left. Now, the entire Democratic Party has moved in that direction, which is why Sanders gives the broadest definition of socialism he can come up.  This makes the line blurred between Democrats and self-proclaimed socialists. Since the 1920s, socialist candidates have run for president on their own Socialist Party ticket.  Now, Sanders, who is no less a socialist than Norman Thomas was in the Socialist Party’s heyday, is running in the Democratic Party and caucuses with them in the Senate.  No wonder Debbie Wasserman Schultz had such a hard time telling Chris Matthews what the difference between them is.

A confident, smiling and laughing Hillary Clinton delivered a top-notch performance at last night’s Democratic debate. The optics were great for her, which she had no doubt anticipated as her only real opponent — Bernie Sanders — stood next to her scowling and looking old and angry as he repeatedly denounced Wall Street. Bernie’s routine might work wonders for him on the campaign trail, but on TV, not so much.

Hillary Clinton outmaneuvered the senator from Vermont, who refused to attack her where she was vulnerable. When Anderson Cooper asked her about her private e-mail server, Clinton again admitted she make a mistake, but said: “What I did was allowed by the State Department.” Just who allowed it she never did say. Hillary is masterfully using tools from her old kit: just as the vast right-wing conspiracy was out to get her and her husband so many years ago, the hullabaloo over her emails is only about Republicans trying to destroy her. To cheers, she said: “I’m still standing.”

Then Sanders piped up:

I think the secretary is right. The American people are sick and tired of hearing about e-mails.

Anderson Cooper replied:

 Secretary Clinton, Secretary Clinton, with all due respect, it’s a little hard — I mean, isn’t it a little bit hard to call this just a partisan issue? There’s an FBI investigation, and President Obama himself just two days ago said this is a legitimate issue.

None of the other candidates dared take up the opening he had given them, which would have raised the question of Hillary’s credibility, trustworthiness, and vulnerability on the question of the e-mails and on so many other things.

Instead of returning Sanders’ favor, Hillary went after him for consistently voting against gun control, including voting five different times against the Brady Bill, which required a federal background check and a five-day waiting period until one can purchase a gun.

Clinton also got Sanders on his claim to be for democratic socialism. Someone forgot to inform Bernie that even in 2015, when asked, Americans overwhelmingly choose capitalism over socialism. Hillary knows it, and said she would take the steps to once again save the capitalist system from itself.

In making that statement, she portrayed herself as an FDR for the 21st century, proclaiming that she is “a progressive who likes to get things done.”

When Sanders pointed to both Denmark and Sweden as examples of nations that the United States should seek to emulate, Clinton countered:

But we are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America. And it’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn’t run amok and doesn’t cause the kind of inequities we’re seeing in our economic system.

What she did was a master stroke: she eschewed socialism as a model while saying she would solve the problem of economic inequality she believes is rightfully raised by Sanders, but which he did not have any realistic answers about how to deal with.

Jim Webb, however, had the best retort to Saunders.

Bernie, I don’t think the revolution’s going to come. and I don’t think Congress is going to pay for a lot of this stuff.

It would be a mistake for Clinton to think that her email problems are over. As columnist Ron Fournier said in the National Journal:

It’s not going to go away — not with the FBI investigating whether confidential information was mishandled under Clinton’s system, and not with independent voters losing faith in Clinton’s word.

As Fournier notes, voters might agree with all of Hillary’s political views, but:

Her character is the issue that threatens to consume all others.

Fournier cited the remarkable column in Politico that appeared the day of the debate by Glenn Thrush and Annie Karnie. Her own campaign, the two journalists reported, revealed:

For months and months the emails distracted and diverted a Clinton team that seemed powerless to move beyond the unfolding scandal … [her arguments] rekindled longstanding concerns about her judgment.

The two interviewed 50 of Hillary’s donors, advisers, operatives, and friends and found:

[They] thought Clinton was a mediocre candidate who would make a good president, if given the chance. They painted a portrait of a politician who talked about learning from past mistakes while methodically repeating them.

Bernie Sanders must be smiling. Right now, the RCP average of polls shows that in the upcoming New Hampshire primary, he is besting Hillary Clinton by 41.0 to 29.7. And in the Iowa caucus polls, Hillary Clinton sees Sanders closing in quickly as she wins by a slim 37.3 to Sanders’ 31.0.

On Morning Joe today, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Mark Halperin attributed Sanders’ growing strength to his consistent message and his authenticity. They are correct that his message is both authentic and consistent, but it is new and fresh only to the thousands of college students who pack his rallies, the most recent one in the Boston area. As Margaret Talbot writes in the current issue of The New Yorker, “He’s been talking about the injustices done to working people by unequal income distribution for more than forty years.”

Why are the young, who seem to make up the bulk of the crowds that turn out for his rallies, so smitten with him? First, his socialist message and analysis dovetail greatly with much of the history and politics they learn at colleges from their aging New Left professors. Particularly in American history classes, they have been inundated with “history from below,” where they learned that progress was made as a result of the people’s struggles against their oppressors; the capitalists are the villains, and leaders of the Socialist Party like Eugene V. Debs are the heroes.

Now, as one interviewee told Talbot, “socialism was ‘getting a bit of a P.R. makeover’” by Sanders, and is no longer the “damning label” that it is to his opponents. Indeed, as she notes, a 2011 Pew poll revealed that to voters under 30, 49% have a positive view of socialism compared to 46% who view capitalism favorably. Summing up Sanders’ policy proposals, she writes:

Most of his policy proposals have to do with helping working people and reducing the influence of the wealthy. He would like to break up the big banks, create jobs by rebuilding infrastructure, and move toward public funding of elections—and provide free tuition at public universities. (This program would be subsidized, in part, by a tax on Wall Street speculation.) He wants to end the “international embarrassment of being the only major country on Earth which does not guarantee workers paid medical and family leave.”

If one goes to his official campaign website and looks at the policy proposals he espouses, one finds that he proposes scores of different “tax the wealthy” programs that he promises will end income inequality. For example, he favors increasing the minimum wage in the next five years to $15 an hour throughout the country. He believes in the much-exposed myth that “women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.” And of course, he favors a single-payer health plan, or “Medicare for All.” How are all of the programs to be financed without breaking the bank? There is, of course, a simple answer: tax the wealthy more, which will provide all the funds necessary to finance these entitlements.

Bernie Sanders must be smiling. Right now, the RCP average of polls shows that in the coming New Hampshire primary, he is besting Hillary Clinton by 41.0 to 29.7. And in the Iowa caucus polls, Hillary Clinton sees Sanders closing in quickly, as she wins by a slim 37.3 to Sanders’ 31.0.

On Morning Joe today, Kristen Solis Anderson and Mark Halperin attributed Sanders’ growing strength to his consistent message and his authenticity.  They are correct that his message is both authentic and consistent, but it is new and fresh only to the thousands of college students who pack his rallies, the most recent one in the Boston area.  As Margaret Talbot writes in the current issue of The New Yorker, “He’s been talking about the injustices done to working people by unequal income distribution for more than forty years.”

Why are the young, who seem to make up the bulk of the crowds who turn out for his rallies, so smitten with him? First, his socialist message and analysis dovetails greatly with much of the history and politics they learn at colleges from their old New Left professors. Particularly in American history classes, they have been inundated with “history from below,” where they learned that progress was made as a result of the people’s struggles against their oppressors, where the capitalists are the villains, and leaders of the Socialist Party like Eugene V. Debs are the heroes.

Now, as one interviewee told Talbot, “socialism was ‘getting a bit of a P.R. makeover’” by Sanders, and is no longer a “damning label” that it is to his opponents. Indeed, as she notes, a 2011 Pew poll revealed that to voters under 30, 49% have a positive view of socialism, compared to 46% who view capitalism favorably. Summing up his policy proposals, she writes:

Most of his policy proposals have to do with helping working people and reducing the influence of the wealthy. He would like to break up the big banks, create jobs by rebuilding infrastructure, and move toward public funding of elections—and provide free tuition at public universities. (This program would be subsidized, in part, by a tax on Wall Street speculation.) He wants to end the “international embarrassment of being the only major country on Earth which does not guarantee workers paid medical and family leave.”

If one goes to his official campaign website and looks at the policy proposals he espouses, one finds that he proposes scores of different “tax the wealthy” programs that he promises will end income inequality. For example, he favors increasing the minimum wage in the next five years to $15 an hour throughout the country. He believes in the much exposed myth that “women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.” And of course, he favors a single-payer health plan, or “Medicare for All.” How are all of the programs to be financed without breaking the bank? There is, of course, a simple answer, tax the wealthy more which will provide all the funds necessary to finance these entitlements.

Sanders also favors one thing that resonates with the students who pack his rallies: “Making tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout America. Everyone in this country who studies hard,” he says, “should be able to go to college regardless of income.” At another place in his website, he emphasizes how different his proposal is from that presented by Hillary Clinton. He favors tuition-free enrollment; Clinton, he says, offers tuition to be paid by middle-class students, with different rates according to family income. Also, her plan insists that students work to help finance their education, something that students whose parents are wealthy will not have to do. They will have to work “10 hours a week, in addition to keeping up with their coursework.”

Horrors. Evidently, Sanders does not seem to realize that 10 hours a week is very little, and that every student who attends college can afford to lose some partying time or socializing and still have a great deal of time for fun as well as studies. I worked far more than those hours, managed to be very active on campus, and do very well in terms of grades. But why not offer students the sky and not expect anything from them?  As one of former student tells Talbot: “how refreshing it was to have someone point out to us that…some things aren’t a privilege, they are a right.”

This reminds me of an old socialist phrase meant to be sarcastic: “When the revolution comes, we’ll all have apple pie.”  Author Said Sayrafiezadeh writes in his wonderful memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free, that when he was growing up he always wanted a skateboard.  He would ask for one every year, but since his mother was working as a full-time activist for The Socialist Workers Party, for a paltry salary, she had one standard response: “By the time you’re fifteen, socialism will have arrived, and then skateboards will be free.”  He turned fifteen. Socialism never came, and the price of a skateboard had gone up.

In Bernie Sanders’ fantasy world, almost everything Americans need will be free, entitlements will grow and new ones created. The issue of our unsustainable debt and growing deficits do not concern Sanders or his base. In their world, the rich will pay for everything. If not them, perhaps the People’s Republic of China will pick up the tab.

Soon after Donald Trump entered the race, pundits predicted that his campaign would surely collapse quickly and that he would self-destruct. Every time another such prediction was made, somehow Trump managed to stay ahead in the polls, and his crowds grew bigger and bigger.

Now, signs are emerging that Trump’s front-runner status may be coming to a close. The RealClearPolitics average of all polls reveals that although still ahead, his poll numbers are slipping. He is not doing well when matched against Hillary.  In a hypothetical Trump vs. Clinton race, Trump comes out ahead of Clinton in only one poll. More importantly, in the Quinnipiac poll,  in a presidential race with Trump, Hillary comes out ahead by a margin of + 2, and in a contest with Joe Biden, Biden comes in as winning the national election by + 11.

Conservative commentators have taken note of this. In The Federalist, Robert Tracinski writes that Trump looks “sensitive and thin-skinned.” He makes the point that Trump is now in the same place Rick Perry was in the polls four years ago, and we know how that turned out. In National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke, in a scathing column, writes that Trump has become a whiner “reduced to sterile indignation.” Trump is a man who responds to criticism by threatening law suits, by descending to ad hominem and crude attacks, and, as Cooke writes, by acting like a “rebellious three-year old.” And in Sunday’s Washington Post, George Will says that “nothing is now more virtuous than scrubbing, as soon as possible, the Trump stain from public life.”

Perhaps the turning point was the boos Trump received at the Values Voters Summit when he attacked Marco Rubio :

You have this clown, Marco Rubio, I’ve been so nice to him. I’ve been so nice and then — no, but he’s in favor of immigration and he has been, he has been, it was the ‘Gang of 8′ and you remember the “Gang of 8,” it was terrible.

Trump, who has changed his position on almost everything, is the last person who should be chastising Rubio for moving away from his original position on immigration.

Compare Rubio on foreign policy to Donald  Trump. Trump blusters that when he becomes president, he will be able to quickly learn about the important issues facing the country and will put together a first-rate team that will advise him. In the meantime, Trump has famously said, he gets his information from TV. Very reassuring. Rubio has said of Trump’s answers on foreign policy questions that he “has sound bites, not policy proposals.” In contrast, Rubio shows a thorough and well-thought out position on every foreign policy issue. He gives comprehensive and searching answers, and is well equipped to handle any Democratic opponent in a debate.

Courtesy AP Images

While Republicans are receiving the most attention for their contentious race for their party’s nomination, the Democrats are having their own problems. Judging from her team’s recent behavior, the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is becoming worried.

Until Joe Biden announces he is going to run — which may happen soon — Hillary’s biggest problem is the surge of support for the democratic socialist candidate, Bernie Sanders. Sanders gets a giant turnout everywhere he speaks, as enthusiastic crowds respond to his Robin Hood message to tax the rich (the one percent) and give the rest to the other 99 percent.

Indeed, the RCP New Hampshire poll averages reveal that Sanders is now ahead in that state’s Democratic primary by 42.8% to Hillary’s 32.3%, a 10-plus spread. The RCP Iowa poll averages show Sanders even with Hillary in the Iowa caucus, where both scored 37.0%.  Even without declaring he is a candidate, Biden scores 14.0%. If he does get into the race, he is likely to draw many voters away from both Hillary and Sanders.

Given these results, it is not surprising to learn that the leading Hillary super PAC, David Brock’s Correct the Record, e-mailed The Huffington Post about what it called “similarities” between Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing extremist who now heads the Labor Party in Britain, and Bernie Sanders:

The “similarities” between the two, according to the email, include Sanders’ introduction of legislation to terminate the United States’ nuclear weapons program, comments that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states is dangerous because it could provoke Russia, opposition to more U.S. funds for NATO, and saying he “was concerned” that proposed new NATO members had shipped arms to Iran and North Korea.

The e-mail also equated Sanders’ favoring of an agreement with Venezuela that provided cheap heating oil to low-income Vermont residents, something that six other states also did, with Corbyn’s support of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who Corbyn said had “electoral democratic credentials.”

The leftist publication Salon called Brock’s attacks “anti-Bernie Sanders red-baiting,” and the writer of the article, Simon Maloy, went on to accuse Brock’s group of trying to make Sanders appear as “part of the international socialist conspiracy” and “dangerously extreme,” although they had “no compelling evidence of their opponents’ disqualifying radicalism.”

Sanders is no Jeremy Corbyn, but in fact, his own proposals reveal him to indeed be quite extreme. As Igor Bobic wrote last June in The Huffington Post, Hillary’s supporter, Sen. Claire McCaskill, said on television that indeed Sanders was too extreme, and complained that “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist.” Her latter complaint, as we know, has long since been corrected by the media.

However, McCaskill — herself a liberal Democrat — is correct in her observation that Sanders wants an expansion of entitlements, and that he seems to have no concern for the increasing debt the United States would incur as a result of his policies.

Sanders, with his proposal for instituting a single-payer U.S. national health system, alone would help lead the country to bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal got national attention for its front-page news story, in which reporter Laura Meckler revealed that Sanders’ proposals would cost $18 trillion in new government spending, including “an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run healthcare program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.”

To pay for it, Mr. Sanders…has so far detailed tax increases that, according to his staff, could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years.

Of course, the Left disputes the Journal’s analysis. Paul Waldman argues in The Washington Post that citizens would only be paying “through taxes for things we’re already paying for in other ways.” And in The Nation, Joshua Holland claims that the Journal article was “designed to shock and awe and discourage voters from giving the social democrat’s ideas a close look,” and that “Sanders’s highly progressive proposals wouldn’t cost the United States a single penny, on net, over that 10-year window. In fact, they’d cost less, overall, than what we’d spend without them.”

While Republicans are receiving the most attention for their contentious race for their party’s nomination, the Democrats are having their own problems. Judging from her team’s recent behavior, the Democrat’s front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is becoming worried.

Until Joe Biden announces he is going to run- which may happen soon-Hillary’s biggest problem is the surge of support for the democratic socialist candidate, Bernie Sanders. Sanders gets a giant turnout everywhere he speaks, as enthusiastic crowds respond to his Robin Hood message to tax the rich (the one percent) and give the rest to the other 99 percent.

Indeed, the RCP New Hampshire poll reveals that Sanders is now ahead in that state’s Democratic primary by 42.8 to Hillary’s 32.3, a 10 plus spread. In Iowa, the RCP Iowa poll shows Sanders even with Hillary in the Iowa caucus, where both score 37.0.  Even without declaring he is a candidate, Biden scores 14.0. If he does get into the race, he is likely to draw many voters away from both Hillary and Sanders.

Given these results, it is not surprising to learn that the leading Hillary super-Pac, David Brock’s Correct the Record, e-mailed The Huffington Post  about what it called “similarities” between Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing extremist who now heads the Labor Party in Britain, and Bernie Sanders:

The “similarities” between the two, according to the email, include Sanders’ introduction of legislation to terminate the United States’ nuclear weapons program, comments that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states is dangerous because it could provoke Russia, opposition to more U.S. funds for NATO, and saying he “was concerned” that proposed new NATO members had shipped arms to Iran and North Korea.

The e-mail also equated Sanders’ favoring of an agreement with Venezuela that provided cheap heating oil to low-income Vermont residents, something that six other states also did, with Corbyn’s support of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who Corbyn said had “electoral democratic credentials.”

The leftist publication Salon called  Brock’s attacks “anti-Bernie Sanders red-baiting,” and the writer of the article, Simon Maloy, went on to accuse Brock’s group of trying to make Sanders appear as “part of the international socialist conspiracy” and “dangerously extreme,” although they had “no compelling evidence of their opponents’ disqualifying radicalism.”

Sanders is no Jeremy Corbyn, but in fact, his own proposals reveal him to indeed be quite extreme. As Igor Bobic wrote last June in The Huffington Post,  Hillary’s supporter Sen. Claire McCaskill said on television that indeed he was too extreme, and complained that “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist.” Her latter complaint, as we know, has long since been corrected by the media.

However McCaskill, herself a liberal Democrat, is correct in her observation that Sanders wants an expansion of entitlements, and that he seems to have no concern for the increasing debt the United States would incur as a result of his policies.

Sanders, with his proposal for instituting a single-payer U.S. national health system, alone would help lead the country to bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal got national attention for its front page news story, in which reporter Laura Meckler revealed that Sanders’ proposals would cost $18 trillion in new government spending, including “ an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American, plus large sums to rebuild roads and bridges, expand Social Security and make tuition free at public colleges.”

To pay for it, Mr. Sanders…has so far detailed tax increases that, according to his staff, could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years.

Of course, the Left disputes the Journal’s analysis. Paul Waldman argues in The Washington Post that citizens would only be paying “through taxes for things we’re already paying for in other ways.” And in The Nation, Joshua Holland claims that the Journal article was “designed to shock and awe and discourage voters from giving the social democrat’s ideas a close look,” and that “Sanders’s highly progressive proposals wouldn’t cost the United States a single penny, on net, over that 10-year window. In fact, they’d cost less, overall, than what we’d spend without them.”

If you believe this, as they say, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Both writers somehow forget to mention what happened in Sanders’ own state, Vermont, when it planned to institute a single-payer system. Gov. Peter Shumlin, the champion of “Medicare for all” as the solution to our health problems, promised voters to institute universal health care. Then, as Sarah Wheaton writes in Politico, “the governor admitted what critics had said all along: He couldn’t pay for it.” He concluded that “the 11.5 percent payroll assessments on businesses and sliding premiums up to 9.5 percent of individuals’ income ‘might hurt our economy.’ ”

What Shumlin finally figured out is that no social service is really free, and establishing the social-democratic paradise in one State, as would be the case in our nation as a whole, would hurt those with lower and middle-class incomes the most. Why did Vermont think it would work? It turns out, Politico also reports, that the now notorious Jonathan Gruber, on a salary of $400,000 a year, told the Governor there would be no problems. He turned out to be quite wrong. The major problem?

The model called for businesses to take on a double-digit payroll tax, while individuals would face up to a 9.5 percent premium assessment. Big businesses, in particular, didn’t want to pay for Shumlin’s plan while maintaining their own employee health plans.

Bernie Sanders will, of course, not get the nomination. But the reason the Clinton camp is trying to Red-bait him is simple; many of the liberal programs she supports are as unfeasible as the ones Sanders champions. And if Elizabeth Warren decides to enter the race, she will undoubtedly resurrect the worst of Sanders’ proposals without having herself branded as a socialist. Moreover, she will quickly inherit all of Sanders’ supporters, as Sanders himself is forced to give Warren his endorsement.

That all the Democratic candidates will be advocating economically unfeasible proposals is a reflection of just how far left the Democrat Party has moved. Clinton and Warren and  Biden may not be democratic socialists, but at this point, it’s a distinction without much difference.