You’re not soon going to mistake former President Jimmy Carter for a Republican, but when you compare him to today’s “progressive” Democrats, it’s almost like they belong to two separate parties.
Carter, while admitting that he and his wife voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, is warning the Democratic Party that they risk losing moderate voters if they keep pushing their policies to the left. In an annual report from his presidential library in Atlanta, Carter said that Democrats were risking another two years of Republican control if they kept pushing far-left ideas that were out of step with mainstream America.
“Independents need to know they can invest their vote in the Democratic Party,” he said. He warned that there could be a political backlash if Democrats “move to a very liberal program, like universal healthcare.”
Carter is certainly not the only Democrat ringing the alarm bells about the sharp leftward turn of the party, but he’s one of the very few. Most Democrats are gleefully embracing the increasingly-socialist policies coming from the left in the hopes of replicating Sanders’ surprise success in the primaries against Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that, A) Sanders’ unique, crusty charisma might have had something to do with that, B) He was up against a historically corrupt and unlikable candidate in Clinton, and C) Erm, who actually won that primary again?
Besides challenging the progressive fringe, Carter separated himself from modern Democrats in another way: Although he has plenty of criticism for the current President, he can actually find it in himself to praise Donald Trump in certain areas. In a climate where Trump could nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, make a big push for Medicare-for-all, and give a speech highlighting the Islamic foundations of the United States and STILL get bashed by every Democrat in Washington, it’s refreshing to see at least one lefty admit that the man is not the embodiment of pure evil.
Carter said that he was optimistic about President Trump’s outreach to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, insisting that our foreign policy needed a shot in the arm to stay fresh.
“Let them be part of the community of nations,” he said of Pyongyang. “I think that would be enough in itself to bring an end to the nuclear program in North Korea.”
We can’t say we’d vote for Jimmy Carter over any Republican – much less Trump – but put him up against today’s Democrats? Jeez, there’s no comparison.
But that just tells you how far the party has migrated into CrazyTown.
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