THE CHIEF STRATEGY OF Democratic political campaigns is to use character assassination, otherwise referred to as “the politics of personal destruction,” as the weapon of choice. Any strategy for resisting these attacks has to begin with an understanding of this brutal fact. The first requirement for any strategy to stop their progressive agenda is to understand that they have tremendous hatred in their hearts for those who oppose them. The second requirement is to know how to confound that hatred. If your opponents are prepared to demonize you as a racist and you have no equally powerful response, you might as well quit the field of battle.
Why do progressives have hatred in their hearts for conservatives? Why do they sound like hellfire-and-damnation preachers when they are on the attack? Because they are zealots of what can only be described as a crypto-religion modeled on the Christian narrative of the Fall and Redemption—the difference being that they see themselves as the redeemers instead of the divinity. To progressives, the world is a fallen place—beset by racism, sexism, homophobia, and the rest—that must be transformed and made right. This redemption was once called communism and is now called socialism, or “social justice.” Theirs is a vision of a world that has become a “safe place”—where there are no deplorables, or where such irredeemables are outlawed and suppressed.
Progressives dream of a world of political correctness and politically enforced equality, where everybody is taken care of by taxing the rich until there are no more rich, universities and schools admit no ideas that are hurtful or offending, environments have no pollution, countries have no borders, and nations have no armies. Progressives are so enthralled by their dreams of a heaven on earth that they see those who oppose their dreams as evil, which is why they hate them. For what decent soul would be against a world in which everyone was taken care of, guaranteed a “living wage,” and provided with free education and health care, food and housing—a world in which all needs are met and there is social justice? What decent person could oppose the idea of open borders that would recognize all the diverse people in the world as part of one big human family? It’s a beautiful dream, and to one degree or another every progressive shares it. Progressives are social redeemers. They see themselves as saving the vulnerable and saving the planet. Consequently, they regard themselves as the army of the saints and those who oppose them as the party of the damned.
This is why Democrats go forward in lockstep while Republicans march to the beat of their own drums. Closing ranks is almost an instinct with Democrats, while solidarity in the line of fire helps them prevail in political battles. How much of an instinct is the lockstep mentality displayed by progressives? Consider one pivotal moment in the recent election campaign—the moment when the polls took a dramatic turn against Trump after an 11-year-old “sex-talk video” was unearthed by the pro-Clinton Washington Post. Democrats responded across the board with outrage, much of it bizarre considering what Democrats—Hollywood Democrats in particular—regularly put up with when sex talk and abusive behavior appears in their own ranks. This particular revelation triggered an immediate exodus of Republicans announcing they could not support their party’s candidate and would not be part of his campaign. It was a bridge too far. “I am sickened by what I heard today,” Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement notable for its political correctness, as he boycotted a Trump event. “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”1
Now try to name one Democrat who defected because they were sickened or appalled by something their candidate actually did, as opposed to merely said. Hillary Clinton violated the espionage laws; she broke her oaths of office; she lied to Congress and the FBI about her illegal server, which exposed classified secrets to America’s enemies; she lied to the general public to hide what she did and repeated her lies over the course of a year; she lied about the number of illegal, unsecure handheld devices she used, and she destroyed or “lost” all of them to hide what she had done; she obstructed justice—a felony—by destroying her e-mails days after Congress had subpoenaed them and warned her not to destroy them; she lied to the American public and the world about the deaths of four American heroes, including an ambassador who was her friend and whose demise came about as a result of circumstances in which she had played a significant role; she lied to the mothers of the dead over their coffins. Yet through all this disgraceful and criminal activity, which would have disqualified anyone else as a presidential candidate, not a single Democratic elected official—not one—said, “This is a bridge too far; I can’t go along with her on this.” Not one.
Why not? Because she was their candidate and, more important, the standard bearer of the progressive cause; because they were going into an election that would shape the nation’s future and advance the cause of social justice. Because breaking ranks would be giving aid to the enemy, to those who oppose the beautiful dream: the racists and sexists, the deplorables.