If we Democrats could fully accept Hillary Clinton’s action of correctly labeling MAGA Republicans “ as a basket of deplorables,” the country would stand a fighting chance. Far from blaming Hillary, I am charging the liberals with allowing the truth to become a weakness. Having lived through her campaign, she predicted lawlessness, chaos, and xenophobia, which are all deplorable, and Democratic advisors and pundits demurred at every turn, running from the truth. Ten years after President Donald Trump told us that, in “two weeks,” he would present a plan to replace former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, nearly thirty million Americans are now poised to choose between seeing a doctor and buying food.
Donald Trump never wanted to replace the ACA because he had no idea then or now how. What he has always wanted is to replace Barack Obama’s legislative legacy. For years, the GOP has propagandized the American public with the lie that the Democrats forced Obamacare down their throats. If one were to look back, one would see former President Obama eschewing universal health care in favor of a compromise that adapted the foundation of a GOP plan devised by Mitt Romney. He and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked Republicans to help refine the “kinks.” “Maybe now that I’m leaving office, maybe Republicans can stop with the 60-something repeal votes they’ve taken, and stop pretending that they have a serious alternative, and stop pretending that all the terrible things they said would happen have actually happened, when they have not, and just work with the next president to smooth out the kinks,” Obama said.
Nancy Pelosi joined the call for compromise, a day after Republican efforts in 2017 to repeal the ACA again: “Democrats extend the hand of friendship, and look forward to our working together in the regular order for the good of the American people,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Democrats tried to live up to the admonition later articulated by former First Lady Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.” What the Democrats did then and have continued to do too many times is to look for a middle ground in the midst of their writ large apology for the truth. Obamacare was a middle-ground stance that effectively killed Universal Healthcare, widely known as Medicare for all. My views on gun ownership are widely known and unapologetically radical. I would take guns out of society. Unless you hunt for a practical or professional reason, or are in law enforcement or the military, put your weapon in the box for incineration. That view is not as radically out of the mainstream as one might think. In the 1970s, when my kids were little, the push to remove guns from their lives was widespread. It was considered the height of crass behavior even to give your kid a cap gun because the country was realizing that guns and violence were on a trajectory to outnumber the population.
Now, at the mention of guns, Democrats start every conversation with the caveat, “I support the Second Amendment, but…. ” Some have even gone so far as to tout their own gun ownership as a leveler to enter the discussion. So, while Democrats clutched their pearls at the word deplorable, Republicans cranked up their racist and xenophobic machine. The current President called Mexicans (not an individual Mexican) rapists and murderers. This was applauded at rallies and speeches by what we have come to know as MAGA: no apologies, no running from their candidate, but both loud and quiet acceptance. Dr. King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” No, I am not advocating for cruelty or lies to guide the Democratic party, just an acknowledgment of the truth: the Republican party is deplorable.
Last night in Pennsylvania the President of the United States took the kid gloves off his racist little fingers and called for the whitening of America. Amidst the lies and insults, he confirmed calling Brown and Black nations shitholes—something he had denied in the past. “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right?” Trump said onstage. “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few?” Not satisfied with the lukewarm response, he went further,… “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries.” He added for emphasis that those places “are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
I can guarantee tonight the GOP toadies and apologists will take to the air, excusing, minimizing, and admiring the words of the President with phrases like straight-talker. The GOP is in the corner of an adjudicated rapist, 34-count convicted felon, and suspected pedophile who sees racial bigotry as a bargaining chip — exactly what qualifies as deplorable. Democrats should embrace the obvious and full-throatedly say, Yes, Hillary was right, the Republican party is DEPLORABLE.