How fitting that it was a Kennedy who delivered the Democrats' response to President Trump's State of the Union address. Real Clear Politics billed it this way:
"Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, scion of one of America’s top political dynasties, is speaking after President Trump’s State of the Union address."
Last night the latest Kennedy aristocrat to burst onto the national scene launched into a diatribe remarkable for being so transparently dishonest, vicious, spiteful, and hypocritical. One straw man after another bit the dust as the photogenic Kennedy sought to establish himself as the new face of the same old Democratic party. Good luck with that.
Democrats may be looking to Joe Kennedy III to follow in the footsteps of Barack Obama whose breakout speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention inspired the nation and led to his election to the presidency only four years later. Yet their speeches were not that alike. Obama's held out the promise of unity, false promise that it was. Funny that he noted there were those who would divide Americans, and then later we find that he, Obama, would be the divider.
"Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."
Kennedy on the other hand takes division as the given. The good, represented by himself and like minded aristocrats, must defeat the Trump-inspired racist rabble.
"This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us – they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.
For them, dignity isn’t something you’re born with but something you measure.By your net worth, your celebrity, your headlines, your crowd size.
Not to mention, the gender of your spouse. The country of your birth. The color of your skin. The God of your prayers.
Their record is a rebuke of our highest American ideal: the belief that we are all worthy, we are all equal and we all count. In the eyes of our law and our leaders, our God and our government.
That is the American promise."
According the Joe Kennedy III, we are all worthy, equal, and we all count in the eyes of our law, our leaders, our God, and government. Except somehow I don't think Hillary, or James Comey, or Loretta Lynch, or even Kennedy himself believe any of it. In light of the sham investigation that held Hillary blameless for ignoring laws that sent others to jail, how could they believe it? The law was certainly not intended to apply to Joe's great uncle Ted. Ted Kennedy, you may recall, drove his car off a bridge and into a Chappaquiddick Island tidal channel with Mary Jo Kopechne in it. He saved his own skin, but then didn't bother to report the accident for nine hours. And he didn't bother to save Mary Joe. She drowned, trapped in his car underwater.
Yes, Joe's speech was dishonest, vicious, and spiteful, but Joe Kennedy III was also being really dumb. Really dumb. Dumb like Hillary with her deplorables comment. Kennedy had this to say about our year of strong economic growth and optimism:
"We see an economy that makes stocks soar, investor portfolios bulge and corporate profits climb but fails to give workers their fair share of the reward.
A government that struggles to keep itself open.Russia knee-deep in our democracy.
An all-out war on environmental protection.
A Justice Department rolling back civil rights by the day.
Hatred and supremacy proudly marching in our streets."
The Democrats have painted themselves into a corner with identity politics. Americans tend to reject policies that they see as encroachments on their freedoms, yet that's what the Democrats are constantly trying to sell to the voters. Democrats have no issues that are not transparently about increasing their own power. Democrats support labor unions and mandatory unionization wherever possible because union dues become party contributions. Democrats support federal regulations on anything and everything because it provides an army of federal employees whose jobs depend on the Democrat vision of an ever expanding government, and because regulations can be used as weapons against political opponents. Democrats support open borders and illegal immigration because Democrats depend on a stream of low income, unskilled workers who are more likely to become future Democratic voters. Democrats oppose any form of voter ID validation because they make use of voter fraud in tight elections.
Most Americans do not belong to labor unions and many of those that do would prefer not to have mandatory dues automatically deducted from their pay. Most Americans oppose unnecessary regulation and would prefer, if not smaller government, at least government that is efficient and cost effective. Most Americans oppose illegal immigration. Most Americans would like vote tallies to reflect an accurate count of legally cast ballots by eligible voters. Democrats have decided that to win on these issues they have to convince voters that opposition is racist or cruel.
That leaves little else for Democrats to campaign on but the evil, the racism, the homophobia of whoever opposes them. At the moment that happens to be Republicans, but the club could grow to include independents. To use Hillary's words opponents are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it." And just as Hillary miscalculated, Joe Kennedy III is not likely to shame anybody into anything. Instead he will create even greater resentment in the hearts of Americans to those moralizing, pretentious progressives who want only to dictate to the rest of us. Good luck, Joe.
