Bob Meade: The battle continues ...

What will it take for the Democrat Party to put forth someone who has a chance of defeating President Trump in the next election? After watching the most recent Democrat candidate free for all, it appears the group is more interested in destroying each other than they are in putting forth a solid candidate to take on The Donald.

At the moment, the leader in the polls happens to be Senator Sanders, an avowed socialist, who knows that, if he ran independently as such, it would create a third-party fracture that would absolutely prevent him or the Democrat candidate from winning the election. Ergo, he has chosen to run as a “democrat-socialist” in the hope of getting enough Democrat votes to challenge the President.

New to the debate stage was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He entered into the contest after seeing that the Democrats had virtually no one who has the ability to attract the majority of their party into selecting them into the leadership position. And, he shares the great concern of the Democrat party that Senator Sanders will bring the party too far to the left to be competitive. He therefore chose to impose himself into the candidate race and, in a very brief amount of time, he has spent over $400 million in advertising in an effort to buy his way into the candidate selection process. Last evening, on the debate stage, virtually every other candidate was his enemy, loudly and consistently accusing him of trying to “buy” the candidate position of the Democrat party. He was under attack by all the candidates who seemed to have done a large amount of opposition research with which to hammer him throughout the debate. Much of the criticisms got very personal and attacked him as cruel to women and minorities and regular people.

However, when not pummeling Mayor Bloomberg, each of the candidates seemed to have enough ammo left to rip apart their fellow candidates.

Clearly, none want Senator Sanders to win, as that will be the proverbial “nail in the coffin” for the Democrat party. Sanders, on the other hand, seems to feel like he has already been duly anointed and freely stressed his anti-free enterprise message. Overall, what seemed to be lacking was any sense of how our free enterprise system has contributed to the wonders of this great nation. Except for the mayor, most seemed to think like former President Obama did when he made the blanket claim, “You didn’t build that!” At the time, Obama either never learned or had forgotten the stories about the Wright Brothers and their transition from owning a bicycle shop to becoming a builder of airplanes. Or of Henry Ford who was first to mass-produce automobiles on his newly created “assembly line”. And maybe he was unaware of how Bill Gates and his partner created the personal computer, or how those scientists at Bell Labs discovered cellular technology. And, as we all know, our country has benefited immensely from these and other similar stories since the time our Republic was formed. Government didn’t create the jobs to fill those the market needs; it just burdened them.

Without a doubt, our country is the greatest nation the world has ever known. The most creative, the most generous, the most prosperous, the freest, and the most desired. With all those plaudits and more, we listen to a debate in which the hopefuls try their hardest to tell us why we should undergo an upheaval in our Democratic Republic and put us on the road to Socialism; to emulate the fate of Venezuela.

The core issue is that the Democrat party does not have a solid candidate with which to oppose President Trump. They have been unwilling to sever ties with Senator Sanders because they know that, in a three-party race, neither the Democrat nor the Socialist would win. And they know that Senator Sanders is the only candidate running for the Democrat nomination who has a solid core constituency; the party cannot afford to give that up simply because there is no other candidate who can muster up a similar following.

Beware! As President Clinton’s campaign manager often said: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Picking a candidate who wants total government control over our free enterprise system may not be the wisest choice.