Marching Leftward

Swamp Fever

David Farrar of Kiwiblog reckons there is a fair chance Donald Trump will get re-elected come 2020.  His argument rests upon the "quality" of his opposition.  

I’m often asked if Donald Trump will win the 2020 election. I got it wrong in 2016 so I am more cautious now. I say he shouldn’t be able to win, but you can never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to select the wrong candidate and screw up. So at present I give him a 40% chance of re-election.  If the Democrats keep pushing the Green New Deal, I give him a 90% chance plus they retake the House and get over 60 seats in the Senate.

There is no doubt that the Democrats have been veering left for over ten years.  Long ago they gave up controlling the centre ground.  Why?  Well, it's chic to be radically left.  One gets all the encouragement one would need from the media to  push that barrow.  Once the media anoints someone as an exciting, new, headline-worthy candidate within a nanosecond all their left wing opponents (within the Democratic party) try to out-do them.  Think of a murmuration of starlings changing direction together in an instant whilst in mid flight.



The end result is a constant policy creep leftward.  Once upon a time Bernie Sanders was (in Democrat eyes) a serious contender for the Presidency.  Now he is too staid.  He is yesterday's man.  Instead we have a phalanx of radical-chic contenders, each attempting to cut-through by being more extreme or more radical than the one who grabbed headlines the previous day.

Marc Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post reviews the brouhaha roiling through Democrat ranks as a result of the radical left's vision for the United States.  His conclusion:

Ocasio-Cortez has inadvertently exposed the neo-socialist lie that you can get something for nothing. The Democratic Party’s embrace of that lie is going to get President Trump reelected.

It turns out that socialism is expensive.  Who would have guessed?

Ocasio-Cortez has been pilloried for her plan to “get rid of farting cows and airplanes,” upgrade or replace “every building in America,” replace “every combustible-engine vehicle” and provide “economic security” for people “unwilling to work” — and rightly so. The old five-year plans of the former Soviet Union are modest, by comparison, in their pursuit of full socialism.

Yet the big untold story is her admission that all of this cannot be paid for simply by taxing the rich. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is campaigning for president on a wealth tax, while Ocasio-Cortez has proposed 70 percent marginal tax rates on wealthy Americans. The message is clear: We’ll soak the millionaires and billionaires and mega-rich corporations so we can give you free stuff.

But her talking points (even the watered-down version that was posted on her website) admit that won’t come close to covering the full costs of her Green New Deal. “The level of investment required is massive,” the talking points declare. “Even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.” Her document says that funding the Green New Deal requires World War II levels of government spending of between 40 and 50 percent of gross domestic product.

Today, federal spending amounts to 21 percent of GDP, or $4.4 trillion annually. Increasing it to between 40 and 50 percent of GDP would require doubling government expenditures to between $84 and $105 trillion over 10 years (and that’s without factoring in rising GDP). But Warren’s wealth tax would raise just $2.75 trillion over 10 years. And according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent marginal rate might raise at best $189 billion over 10 years, and could actually cost the federal government $63.5 billion in lost revenue by stifling economic growth and encouraging capital flight.

Taxing the rich won’t come close to covering the costs of the Green New Deal, which includes a bunch of socialist policies that have nothing to do with climate change. Manhattan Institute budget expert Brian Riedl has calculated the 10-year costs using liberal and nonpartisan sources. The results are stunning: $32 trillion for a single-payer health care plan; $6.8 trillion for a government jobs guarantee; $2 trillion for education, medical leave, job training and retirement security; and between $5 trillion and $40 trillion to fund universal basic income to support those who are “unwilling” to work. (The final price depends on how “universal” it is.) Grand total? Between $46 and $81 trillion. 

Now that the media has engaged in enthusiastic hagiography of Ocasio-Cortez, the rest of aspiring leaders of the Democratic party are leaping on the bandwaggon, shouting, "Me Too".

The end result? Republicans--even Donald Trump--appear more reasonable and common-sensical by the day.