Why It's Harder to Run As a Democrat

The most-illuminating moment of the first Democratic debate wasn't Kamala Harris' condemnation of Joe Biden's wildly-misunderstood comment about working with segregationists Herman Talmadge and James Eastland, but her response to a moderator's question.

After giving a lengthy explanation of her health care plan, I believe it was Savannah Guthrie who asked Harris how she proposed to pay for it.

Rising to the bait, Harris fired back. She pointedly questioned why no one asked the same of Donald Trump as he was giving away massive amounts of money to the wealthiest portions of our population.

Her reply shed light on a curious phenomenon in present day American politics: Entirely different things are expected of Republicans and Democrats.

Democrats need to bring actual ideas to the table and get buy-in from a bewilderingly diverse electorate. 

Republicans only need to appeal to gun totin' white guys, rich white guys and angry white guys who essentially hate anyone who isn't just like them, be it because of genitalia, country of origin, political belief, sexual orientation or religion.

Republicans need only to bellow louder than the candidate next to them to gain approval. It's a game called How conservative are you?, and the more obnoxious the answer the better.

Aided and abetted by Supreme Court-approved gerrymandering, it's no wonder defectives like Dick Cheney and Donald Trump assumed the presidency. (Oh—you thought George W. Bush was president? Awww. That's cute.) 

For a Republican, acting like the loudest drunk in the bar is a highly-effective campaign strategy.

As he works to undo the damage his feckless trade negotiations with China have wrought and publicly thumbs his nose at concern over Russia's interference in our elections, the Trump-whore tweets.

Yes, besides being the biggest dick in the room, Trump's most consistent personality trait is his Twitter addiction.

As if anyone were interested, Donald weighed-in with his thoughts on the Democratic debate. Among his profundities were “Boring!” and the incredibly ironic “How about taking care of American Citizens (sic) first!?”

Yes, the same guy who engineered the enormous giveaway to the one-percent and its corporations and routinely scales back work place, environmental and economic protections is now worried about American Citizens (sic).

Hmmm. Perhaps the error is ours that we haven't pressed Donald on his definition of Citizens (sic).

So while we tolerate things from Donald Trump even the staunchest of Democrats would have questioned had they originated with Barack Obama, we make Democrats stronger and weaken Republicans when we hold Dems to a higher standard.

Taking the high road inevitably means working at a higher elevation, and as any sentient being understands, the more-challenging the work-out environment the better the results.

We will use that muscle and kick Republican ass in 2020.