Democrats have an obsession with a single four-letter word
In the canon of 2016 presidential election political pandering, one episode stands above the rest. In August of 2015, Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton invited her Twitter followers to explain their feelings about student loan debt to her. “Tell us in 3 emojis or less,” she requested.
If you are a college student who communicates via emoji, the only appropriate emoji for you to be using is one of a diploma engulfed in flames. But as evidenced in last Thursday night’s presidential debate in Milwaukee, Democrats’ messaging hasn’t gotten any more sophisticated.
Instead of three emoticons, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders can distill their campaign messages into four simple, traditional letters: “M-OR-E.”
While Republicans are earning the rap as being the “dumb party,” Democratic campaigns continue on their mission to promise “more” things to “more” people. Running a Dem campaign is simple: If you think something is good, just say we need “more” of it. If we need expanded health care, let’s spend more. If college students don’t like paying tuition, let’s give them more money to go to school.
During Thursday’s two-hour debate, candidates used the word “more” over 40 times. Among the list of things we need “more” of, according to Clinton and Sanders: Families paying taxes to fund universal health care, people on government-run health care, information on fixing the criminal justice system, federal dollars in communities with persistent generational poverty, rich people paying taxes, money in the Social Security fund, government infrastructure jobs, and on and on. Both candidates agreed that America needs more of pretty much everything — they only disagreed about the degree to which government should control every aspect of our lives.
That’s primarily because Sanders is the iron-fisted ruler of a kingdom that exists only between his ears. According to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, Sanders’ plans would cost taxpayers $18 trillion over a decade. There is no dollar in your pocket over which he doesn’t salivate, as he believes higher taxes are the salve that cures all the nation’s ills. From racism to criminal justice reform to higher education to income inequality, Sanders’ knee-jerk invocation of “millionaires and billionaires” is repetitive enough to make Marco Rubio supporters cringe. (Number of times “Wall Street” was namechecked during the Democratic debate: 25.)
By reflexively promising “more,” of
Suddenly Sanders looked like Marcel Marceau.
everything, Democrats are emulating the arch-villain of overpromising, Republican Donald Trump. The New York billionaire titillates the lowest common denominator simply by offering “more” stuff and “better” leadership. Without even pretending to issue any specifics, Trump has promised everything from a more terrific military to classier health care to a tremendous economy to better-looking baristas. And as much thought is needed to generate these musings as there is to just mindlessly utter the word “more.”
Indeed, at Thursday’s debate, the candidates were asked to answer a Facebook question about whether there were any areas of government they’d like to reduce. Suddenly, the loquacious Sanders turned into Marcel Marceau, mumbling about general “waste and inefficiency” in bureaucracy. Sanders not offering a single specific was the equivalent of lighting his podium on fire and running off the stage, hoping nobody noticed. Out of the over 16,000 words spoken at the debate, the candidates spent 1.4% of them answering the question about ways to reduce government.
This is certainly conservatism’s biggest handicap; explaining how smaller government and less regulation ultimately benefits citizens is more difficult than simply waving government’s finger and decreeing things to be so. But if we want plausible, specific solutions from our politicians during this election season, we could use a lot less of “more.”