Here is the opening and closing of Victor Davis Hanson’s article today at National Review:
The Democrats are following the lead of the progressive media — together, they now form the anti-Trump brigade.
Is there a Democratic-party alternative to President Trump’s tax plan?
Is there a Democratic congressional proposal to stop the hemorrhaging and impending implosion of Obamacare?
Do Democrats have some sort of comprehensive package to help the economy grow or to deal with the recent doubling of the national debt?
What is the Democratic alternative to Trump’s apparent foreign policy of pragmatic realism or his neglect of entitlement reform?
The answers are all no, because for all practical purposes there is no Democratic party as we have traditionally known it.
. . .
Most of Hillary Clinton’s agendas and campaign themes were not policy-oriented; nor did they grow from a coherent and detailed political ideology shared by Democratic officials. Instead, Hillary Clinton modeled her talking points on media-driven agitprop such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and global-warming activism.
Yet outside Hollywood, New York, and Washington, the issues facing voters are not income redistribution, transgendered bathrooms, the division of Americans by race, or the radical alteration of the economy to supposedly address recent climate change induced by carbon emissions. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in late 2016, the media earned only a 19 percent favorable rating, which raises the question of whether the fusion between Democrats and the media is the old party’s salvation or suicide.
Donald Trump has been given a great gift in that his gaffes are seen by most Americans in the context of an obsessed and unhinged Democratic-media nexus. He is pitted against a new fusion party of media elites and aging political functionaries, who all believe that America should operate on their norms, the norms of Washington, New York, Hollywood, and Malibu — all places that symbolize, to most Americans, exactly how the country has gone wrong.
Read more: National Review
