Michael Tomasky: ‘Trump Is Burning The Constitution and the Biggest Villain In the Democratic Debate Was…Barack Obama?’

Good for Michael Tomasky for getting down to brass tacks about the political self-immolation displayed by Democrats Wednesday night, wherein the most popular president in modern history, Barack Obama, with a 97% approval rating amongst Democrats, as we speak, got dragged through the mud so that Democratic nominees could take shots at front runner Joe Biden. Which guy is the enemy here? Who do we need to defeat? The Russian puppet and his Republican enablers, who are undermining the foundations of all our institutions daily, like a plague of radioactive termites? Or Barack Obama? Because as Tomasky opines, you wouldn’t have known the answer from listening to Wednesday’s debate and all the Obama bashing. Daily Beast:

Wednesday’s debate ended up being far more about Obama’s record than Trump’s. In fact, except for the rehearsed opening and closing statements, Obama came in for more criticism than Trump. This is absolute madness. And it’s political suicide.

Thank God for at least one clear thinker amongst us. I have said from the outset of this political cycle that this election is the Democrats to win or to screw up, and after Wednesday’s performance, I was seriously afraid that the latter might be the direction in which we’re going.

There are two points that need to be borne in mind, here: First and foremost, this is not a normal election. This is a referendum of Donald Trump and our one and only shot to save American life as we know it. I do not believe that to be a histrionic statement, I believe it to be true. If Trump gets in for a second term, the economic havoc that he is already wreaking, will be just that much more profound and difficult to reverse. If you thought Dubya drove us over the cliff, just wait.

As to America’s status in the world, if Trump is reelected, you can kiss that goodbye and say hello to a new world order. I don’t mean that phrase in the conspiracy theory sense of the word, the emergence of a totalitarian, one world government, but rather in the sense of a period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power; similar to what we experienced after WWII. In the eventuality of eight years of Trump, America will not only lose a lot of world markets, which truthfully, we may have already lost, but we will never regain face on the world stage again as a preeminent power. A reelection of Trump will make the statement that white supremacy trumps the melting pot, that we are a stupid and base people, no longer an exceptional one, and that we have devolved to a very low common denominator.

Secondly, granting for the sake of argument that the foregoing is true, the Democratic primary process cannot be business as usual, either. It’s a normal thing in politics, granted, that the front runner gets bashed. However, in today’s polarized political climate, whatever the Democrats do we need to present a unified front. Yes, there can be some squabbling over policy, but in the main, all of the candidates need to focus on the task at hand which is defeating Donald Trump. There is no other issue. These are not normal times. That’s my two cents, here’s Tomasky’s:

Understand me: My point is emphatically not to make a comparative defense of Biden. My points are two.

First, that everybody who’s been in public life, in positions carrying life-and-death responsibility as mayors and state attorneys general and even vice presidents sometimes are, has made difficult decisions among a series of options that ranged from bad to worse. Booker should have worked with Christie—Booker was the mayor of his state’s largest city, and Christie was his governor! But note how sinister “Booker worked with Trump lover Christie” can be made to sound in a sentence or tweet.

Second, that if this primary gets too bogged down in that, it will bring way too much bad blood to a boil, and the nominee will stagger into the general election campaign. In defining any candidate’s past actions by the standards of today’s left-most criteria, everybody will end up looking bad. The debates will yield nothing but video clips of attacks—character attacks—that will make fantastic ads for the Trump campaign.

The Democratic Party, unlike the Republican Party, is a party of change; of constant striving for more progress and social justice, as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out Wednesday night after the debate. A commitment to that is one of the key reasons Democrats are Democrats, and I mean everyone, from Rashida Tlaib to John Delaney. That, obviously, is a good and necessary thing.

But that commitment cannot require a rejection of the past. That is dogma and intolerance, and that way lies intellectual darkness.

It’s beyond intellectual darkness, it’s anarchy. Obama was a fine president and trashing his legacy to snipe at Biden is misguided and unthinking. All that is done with these purity pronouncements about immigration, healthcare, what have you, is to make the Democratic party look weak and fragmented and to provide material for attack ads in 2020. If you don’t think that in the Trump campaign war room right now, they are cackling and rubbing their hands over Wednesday’s display, then you are woefully naive.

Granted, Democrats are flying blind into this one. The traditional ways of campaigning are not going to work because the playing field has so dramatically changed. The election of Trump broke the mold and continues to do so. My purpose is not to castigate any one Democratic candidate. My belief is that if we don’t collectively come to grips with the plain reality of the situation, which is that democracy is teetering on an abyss and will be lost if we don’t do the right thing and unite to defeat Donald Trump, we will live to regret it as a party and as a nation. Again, and from now until November 3, 2020 I will say, this is not business as usual. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and we need to unite against a corrupt Republican party and it’s pathetic, yet pernicious, incumbent. We can’t worry about purity or perfection in our candidate. The worst Democrat on his/her worst day is better than what’s in the White House now. We need to remember that at all times and go easy on each other and keep our eyes on the only prize: We need to get rid of Donald Trump.