American Democrats: Get Real

There are always two Americas. At the worst they fought a civil war and at best they unite as one, to face a challenge together, as after 9/11. But it is not always the same two, although broadly it is, like every democracy, a conservative tendency versus a liberal enlightenment. What is going on now is doing America’s standing in the world a great deal of harm.

It is not about the two Americas. It is about one political party, the Democrats. They are behaving like spoiled children in a grown up world because they lost the Presidency and control of Congress. This was not because of Russian hackers, but because  the Clinton/Obama years had failed to protect the interests of ordinary working people upon whom their party relies to win. Furthermore if there was any fallout from the Wikileaks disclosures it was not because a dodgy Clinton’s e-mails were hacked, but because she wrote them.

There is no doubt that Trump is what in England we might call a Marmite President. A unique flavour you either love or hate, nothing in between. But he is the President, he is clearly working at an astonishing pace for a 71 year old and he is doing his best. It is irrelevant whether you like his policies or not. It is also irrelevant whether there are screw-ups in a White House bedding down. But what is very relevant is the duty incumbent upon the smarting Democrats to be a responsible Opposition, which is both effective and dignified. America is not at war with Russia. Russia is not the Soviet Union. There is not a single western democracy in which politicians cannot talk to whomsoever they like, because that is what freedom is.

The Attorney General may have talked to the Russian Ambassador in connection with his congressional duties before he joined the Trump administration, and there is absolutely no valid reason anybody, outside the fetid cauldron of Democratic party despair, can see why he should not. He answered a question about  contacts at his confirmation hearing truthfully by saying he had not had contacts with the Russian government in connection with the Trump campaign.

Two final points. The Democratic Party of the United States, previously the one I have favoured from afar, is now a political train wreck and needs to do something about itself.  Second, if the fabric of the world’s leading democracy is so rotten that it can be destabilized by Russian hackers using methodology and algorithms within the competence of thousands of teenagers across the world, there is work to be done there too.