Fans of a certain genre of music may recognize the title of this article from a Metallica song. It popped into my head as I read the Democrats’ recent plans, threats, and promises. Some of these are born of the Republicans’ plans to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Others are born of the party’s leftward lurch, a lurch driven by the re-emergence of socialist fervor in a small but vocal and fear-inducing segment of the populace.

The Democrats had it all in 2008: the Presidency, the House, and a super-majority in the Senate. About the only rein on their power was an even ideological split in the Supreme Court (and it’s worth noting that the Court’s conservative justices have been more likely in recent years to break from “their” side than the liberal ones have). They were in virtually complete control, subject only to an occasional reminder from the Court that the Constitution still mattered.

They blew it. They lost the House in 2010, they lost the Senate in 2014, they lost eleven governorships, over 900 state legislative seats, and 30 state legislative chambers. And, worst of all, they lost the Presidency to a polarizing, trash-talking outsider, in what should have been recognized as a spectacular rebuke.

Why? They went too far leftward. Their agenda turned off much of the nation that wasn’t concentrated in the big cities that they’ve made their base.

In politics, sadly, there is no lesson so obvious that it cannot be ignored, and no mistake so big that it cannot be repeated.

The Democrats spent the entirety of the last four years scheming, plotting, attacking, lying, and twisting the nation into knots over their fury at Trump’s victory and at the temerity of those who voted for him to defy them.

With some success. Aided, of course, by the carnival barker that embarrassed their anointed one. They regained the House, and stand on the verge of retaking the Senate and the Presidency.

Not nearly enough, apparently. Rather than accept the reality of their past mistakes (born of their hubris), the things that put them in the position of seeing RBG’s seat filled by a conservative, they’re given into their rage and planning scorched-earth tactics as “payback.” Payback for the other team’s temerity in winning and in doing what it was elected to do.

So, rather than prepare to avoid repeating the mistakes they made after 2008’s sweep, they’re planning to make themselves mistake-proof. They’re planning to:

• eliminate the legislative filibuster entirely, so that they don’t need a supermajority (which they lost in 2009, in the midst of the ObamaCare over-reach) to pass their agenda.
• add a passel of Federal judges, rather than simply filling vacancies as they open, in order to undo the Republicans’ filling of many empty seats during Trump’s term. Of course, the tilt of the Federal bench is their own fault, thanks to Harry Reid’s elimination of the filibuster for seating judges during Obama’s term.
• “pack” the Supreme Court, to undo the presumptive seating of a conservative Justice in the currently vacant seat, and to tilt the Court their way and avoid the smack-down they endured during Obama’s years.
• Add a couple new States to the Union, all of them reliably Democratic, in order to tip both the Senate and the Electoral College in their direction in future elections.

In other words, they want to make their control of the government permanent, and remove the checks-and-balances that keep them from running whatever agenda they want. They want to change the fundamentals, to game the system, so that they stay in power forever after. And, along the way, remove any ability of the other party to slow their agenda.

This agenda, wholly un-rebuked by the clear message of the electorate during Obama’s years, includes:

• Taxation, and lots of it. First, they’ll go after the job creators, and then, when they find that doesn’t get them what they want, they’ll go after everyone else. On top of it, they’ll attempt a wealth tax, and, I predict, they’ll impose a VAT or some other form of national sales tax, because Hauser’s Law suggests that tapping income won’t get them what they want.
• Socialize medicine. ObamaCare turned into a soggy mess when Teddy Kennedy died and Scott Brown was elected to halt its progress. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason – the Dems didn’t have enough of a taste for it, they saw that the country didn’t want to go all the way there, and a bunch of backroom deals had to be made to even get that part-way mess enacted. Now, with the raging Twitter-horde ready to cow anyone who doesn’t fall in line, the leadership can write whatever it wants. That leadership is, itself, going to have to deal with the rabid sheepdogs pushing them leftward.
• Green New Deal. Get ready for an economy-destroying, quality-of-life-degrading, special-interest-favoring, semi-socialistic mass takeover of the energy industry and anything remotely related to it in America. All in the name of an effort that won’t make a hill-of-beans difference to the climate, not with the BRICS nations carrying on as they will.
• Giveaways, and more giveaways. Massive wealth ‘redistribution,’ free this and that, and probably some other vote-buying under the guise of “reparations.”
• Lost rights. The Democrats have not had much use for individual rights, not in speech, not in religion, not in privacy, and certainly not in guns. Religious exemptions to, well, anything, will go away. Taxpayer dollars will fund third trimester abortions. “Assault weapons” will be banned, national gun registration will happen (either overtly or back-doored via a national background check mandate), decades of state-level progress in gun rights will be thwarted, and when none of that suffices, more bans will happen. Free speech will be curtailed, as “hate speech” laws proliferate and a stacked Court does nothing to stop them.
  – Continued massive spending. They plan to address every issue with more government. Modern Monetary Theory will go from being a crackpot notion to standard policy, and we’ll just keep printing money.

And much, much more.

Unlike much that happened during the Obama and Trump years, which, with the exception of ACA, wasn’t structural, all this crap won’t be undoable, even if the Republicans manage to overcome the Democrats’ rewriting of the rules and win again.

All this is born of fury and rage at the voters’ past rejections of their genius, brilliance and “we’re smarter than you are” condescension. It’s also born of their own past arrogance. The viciousness of Supreme Court confirmations has its roots in the Democrats’ character assassination of Robert Bork. The loss of the filibuster in the Senate as a check against excess was begun by Harry Reid, then-Senate Majority Leader, itself prompted by Obama’s “go to the back of the room and shut up” message to the Republicans and the nasty divisiveness that spawned. The piece-de-resistance, of course, was their coronation of Hillary Clinton and the arrogance that led to her defeat.

For all the cringe, divisiveness, and bad policy that’s come out of Trump, it’s the notion of a terrible Tetrad of Democrats, stinking drunk with power and willing to do whatever it takes to hold it, that scares the bejeezus out of me. My question to those who’d rather be governed by that Tetrad than by a divided government with Trump in the White House and the Democrats in at least one house in Congress is, doesn’t that scare you?

And, for all those who think that ejecting Trump will give the GOP a chance at seating a “good Republican” President in 2024, do you think you can overcome the Democrats’ re-rigging the system in their favor? Do you think that the GOP will be able to undo the changes the Democrats plan? Do you see any vestige of “limited government” remaining?

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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