The irrational nihilism of the left in response to the Trump agenda

Victor Davis Hanson:

As the 2020 election nears, there is as yet no coherent Democratic response to the Trump agenda. If Trump himself is unpopular and polarizing, his agenda is for the most part in sync with a majority of Americans who like the 3% annualized GDP growth; near-record peacetime unemployment; record natural gas and oil production; young, scholarly and constructionist justices; pro-Israel Mideast politics; and realism about NATO laxity, the flawed Iran Deal, and the Paris Climate Accord, Chinese mercantilism, and the past inability of the U.S. to translate battlefield victories abroad into lasting security and strategic advantages.

Yet hatred of Trump himself, as well as fear of a successful Trump agenda, has unhinged his opposition. From 2017-19, progressives sought to abort the Trump presidency through furor at his person and often pathetic attempts to invoke the Emoluments Clause, the 25th Amendment, the Logan Act, Articles of Impeachment, the Mueller special counsel investigation, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s counter-intelligence investigation of Trump, and cherry-picking federal justice to stay Trump initiatives. All failed. Now the Left has decided to offer not just invective, but a new array of alternatives—often of a radical sort that we have not seen or heard about since the 1960s.

The Democratic Party is now in the hands of newcomer establishment figures such as Senators Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono; socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; newly elected representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib; and activists like Linda Sasour, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and the usual Hollywood celebrities—all of whom Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and former Vice President Joe Biden futilely try to appease.

The result is that on almost every issue, the answer to Trump is neither liberal nor progressive, but nihilistic. The logical extreme alone ensures revolutionary purity even as it would result in chaos and destruction.

The new Democratic idea of Medicare for all is tantamount to Medicare for no one. Abolishing private insurance would crash the health-care system. Once everyone is let into the Medicare system--despite never having contributed to it--the entire notion of a generational and legal bond is shattered. If birth is to be rationed by radical abortionists, soon life will be too—and on the same premise that a supposed defective or unwanted infant is as much a burden to the family and society as is a sick or unproductive senior.

The leftwing rebuttal of Trump’s economic agenda is apparently not now a return to Obama tax schedules. Much less is it a point-by-point refutation of Trump’s efforts to reduce regulations and taxes.

Instead, new Democrats are calling for an unconstitutional “wealth tax” on the accumulation of already taxed income. They propose a radically new estate tax to confiscate already taxed income. And they envision new rates of 70% to 90% on the top brackets—on the logic that if the government does not get your savings account, or your estate, it can at least take your income.

The logic is again nihilistic: if lower taxes have created rare 3% per annum growth and near-record unemployment, then far higher taxes would do what exactly? Stall the economy to ensure a recession where everyone might be more equally poorer?
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There is more.

These are not the Bill Clinton Democrats are even the Obama radicals.  They are much worse and would do great damage to the country if elected.  If they tried to impose Medicare for all and the Green New Deal, untold numbers of people would die as a result of those policies.

It is more than passing strange how the Democrats and their media cohorts try to ignore the success of the Trump economy and pretend the country is in dire straights.