Perhaps relying on the same flawed polls that told them that Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump in a landslide, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are convinced that the path to victory lies in being as extreme and “progressive” as they can possibly be.
As such, they have concocted some of the ugliest, dumbest policy proposals in modern political history. Yes, polls show that some of these proposals are popular with a certain slice of the electorate, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are idiotic, malformed, disfigured fantasies intended to impress the socialists on Twitter.
Here are four of the worst.
Lowering the Voting Age to 16
On March 14, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she was personally in favor of lowering the national voting age from 18 to 16.
“I myself, personally, I’m not speaking for my caucus, I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Pelosi said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school when they’re interested in all of this when they’re learning about government to be able to vote.”
In other words, before they get out into the real world, get a job, and realize how much money the government is confiscating from their paycheck.
The proposal to lower the voting age hasn’t yet permeated the 2020 Democrat field the way some other bad ideas have, but Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Pete Buttigieg have endorsed it.
Last week, Beto O’Rourke said it was on his radar. “I’m open to the idea of a younger voting age,” he said. “There’s some merit to it.”
Yeah, like stuffing the ballot box with more Democrat votes.
Expanding the Supreme Court
Democrats are relentlessly irritated that President Trump has had the opportunity to now nominate not one but two constitutionalists to the Supreme Court. Still seething over what they contend was the unfair blocking of Merrick Garland during the final year of Obama’s presidency, the 2020 Democrats have begun floating an idea that would forever ruin the public’s faith in the Judicial Branch: Expanding the number of Supreme Court justices until…well, until the court tilts to the left, of course!
“We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Sen. Kamala Harris told Politico. “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”
Others who have entertained the idea of packing the high court include Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, O’Rourke, and Cory Booker.
Bottom line: Do not underestimate the lengths Democrats will go to protect abortion.
Doling Out Reparations for Slavery
This is one of those idiotic proposals that has, until now, remained the exclusive province of pointy-headed academics and Black Panthers. But in the Age of Social Justice, people like Ta-Nahesi Coates call the shots for the Democrats. Apparently concerned on some level that a phenomenon like “Blexit” could snowball into a real problem for their party, 2020 contenders have decided to double-down on the same pie-in-the-sky promises that disillusioned black voters to begin with.
Over the past month, Warren, O’Rourke, and Harris have all flirted with the idea of reparations to one extent or another, although none of them have come out with anything resembling an actual plan to “pay back” black Americans for the sins of our ancestors.
The debate has led to at least one unintentionally-funny moment, though, when Warren suggested expanding the reparations conversation to Native Americans as well. Pander on, Fauxcohontas. Pander on.
Passing the Green New Deal
We can only assume that most of the 2020 candidates will be too embarrassed to bring up the Green New Deal for at least a couple of weeks. After all, many of them had a golden opportunity to vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s signature legislation this week when Mitch McConnell put it on the floor of the Senate. Guess how many of them voted for it? ZERO.
But that hasn’t stopped this group of pandering leftists from hitching themselves to Ocasio-Cortez’s star power whenever they get the chance. Nearly every Democrat in the field has endorsed the proposal, and every senator in the race actually signed on to the bill itself. And still they wouldn’t vote for it! If we had a political media more interested in reporting than prostituting itself for the Democratic Party, this might have made for some uncomfortable questions. As it is, the media is content to just treat it as a “Republican stunt” and let the Democrats off the hook for their baldfaced hypocrisy.
Still, even though they wouldn’t put their vote on it in the Senate, it should not be forgotten that Bernie Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Booker, and Harris have all endorsed the Green New Deal – a piece of legislation that would, according to experts, cost the United States nearly $100 trillion over ten years and destroy the transportation industry as we know it.
Seeing as how we haven’t even arrived at the first primary debates yet, expect many more dumb ideas where these came from.