It’s not easy being a Democrat these days. With 22 major candidates (so far) vying for the nomination for president, it’s a herculean task just trying to keep track of who they are, where they came from, and what wacky proposals they are putting forth.
The media seems to have hopped on the Joe Biden bandwagon and is painting him as a moderate, a former vice president, and senior statesman with the experience to steer the country through the Roaring Twenties of the 21st century.
But a key mistake many people are making is to think that who would be a better Democratic presidential candidate has to do with the nominee, that Beto O’Rourke would be better than Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris would be better than Tulsi Gabbard, or that Biden would be better than all of them. This is flawed thinking.
It’s the same mistake people made, in reverse, in 2016 by thinking that what mattered was the perceived faults with the Republican candidate himself, Donald Trump.
But, believe it or not, the individual candidate’s strengths and weakness, foibles and flaws, who supports Medicare for All or the Green New Deal, don’t matter very much at all.
Everyone running against Trump in 2020 represents the same extreme Democratic Party and its radical philosophy.
Elect a president and you’re voting in a whole army, starting with a vice president, a cabinet, and thousands of others, including policy advisers, shaped by the philosophy of that party.
Some people spent a lot of time wondering how pro-life President Trump would be. He has surpassed expectations, but even if he hadn’t, look at the experienced, passionate, pro-life advocates that he surrounded himself with, starting with Vice President Mike Pence, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and countless others. Most of these people are not publicly known. But look, for instance, at the staff of the Department of Health and Human Services and you will see a veritable who’s who in the pro-life movement, and these people are having a key impact on policy day by day.
Then there are the judges.
The Senate has just confirmed Joseph Bianco to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. He was the 103rd of President Trump’s nominees to be confirmed. When all of Trump’s judges are seated, the era of liberal judicial activism will grind to a halt. The men and women the president has nominated for these lifetime appointments respect and abide by the Constitution and will adjudicate accordingly.
Included in the president’s nominees are Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court now has a 5-4 majority of judges who hold the Constitution up as the gold standard, rather than as an outdated document that can be overlooked while legislating from the bench. But 5-4 is the narrowest of margins, and barring another retirement during Trump’s tenure, a Democratic president could tilt the court leftward with their first nominee.
Don’t think for a moment that any one of the Democratic hopeful’s judicial nominees would be any better than those of any of the other Democratic hopefuls.
The makeup of the federal judiciary couldn’t be more important, as it is these judges who decide which laws stand and which are unconstitutional, and thus relegated to the scrap heap of good legislation rendered moot.
The Democratic candidates are too busy right now trying to distinguish themselves in a ludicrously packed field of liberals to worry about judges, but some outside the race are trying to get them to pay attention.
Andrew Gillum, who lost the Florida gubernatorial race last year, is urging the would-be contenders to pay attention to the judiciary. According to The Nation:
The role of the courts likewise has to be central to everyone.
It’s no secret that a number of Trump voters in 2016 actually were casting a ballot against Hillary Clinton, and those voters might be pondering the Democratic scree hoping to find one solid rock to cling to in the election to come. But voting for Biden or any of the others would be just as grave a mistake as a vote for Clinton would have been.
I urge those voters who might not support everything President Trump stands for to think long and hard before pulling the lever for any of the Democrats, including bumbling, avuncular Joe Biden. All of them trail the party’s baggage behind them and none of them will be good for America.
Father Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the national director of Priests for Life.
