Victor Davis Hanson: What Is The Democratic Alternative To Trump?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative.

Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump’s latest policy.

Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor.

Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation.

Take foreign policy.

Democratic senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suddenly flew to the White House.

The Euros praised Trump for offering some sort of negotiated pathway to peace after over three years of war and some 1.5 million dead, wounded, missing, and captured on both sides — on Europe’s doorstep.

So why did Democrats object to such negotiations by Trump?

Was the reason that no such thing occurred during the Biden administration, when Putin invaded Ukraine, after his earlier invasions during the Obama era?

What is the left’s alternate plan? The old Biden idea of supplying Ukraine with enough money and arms to keep fighting and dying, but with no path to either victory or a negotiated peace?

Would they prefer a fourth, fifth, or sixth year of war, or an additional one million casualties?

The more Trump pressed almost all NATO members to pay their promised two percent of GDP on defense, the more Democrats grew irate over Trump’s overseas influence.

NATO members now want to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP and gush that Trump is “Daddy.”

Democrats steamed at that, since Europeans are supposed to hate Trump, not admire him for rebooting NATO.

Would they prefer the old, disarmed NATO?

Under the Biden administration, over 10 million illegal aliens flooded the country, sometimes 10,000 a day at the southern border. More than half a million criminals swarmed in.

Yet now there is essentially zero illegal immigration and over 100,000 criminal aliens deported. A million who entered illegally have voluntarily gone home.

Yet the left has fought the enforcement of immigration law tooth and nail.

Do they believe that it is lawful and moral to break immigration law but immoral and illegal to enforce it?

What is their solution?

To allow in 20, 30, or 40 million more illegal aliens to distort the census and bring in new voters and constituencies?

Is their plan to protect 400,000 illegal-alien criminals to roam at will? Or to add another 600 sanctuary jurisdictions that will not hand over criminal illegal aliens to immigration authorities?

Democrats used to support reciprocal tariffs to save American jobs and businesses — while warning of Chinese mercantilism.

But now they blast Trump for negotiating tariffs with dozens of nations in efforts to reduce an unsustainable $1 trillion trade deficit.

So far, Washington projects $300 billion in new revenue.

Foreign businesses have promised to invest between $10 and $15 trillion within the United States. Trading partners have lowered tariffs on U.S. goods and services.

So why the left-wing frenzy?

Do they object to too much new federal income? Is there too much new foreign investment?

Are new foreign tariffs too low on U.S. exports? Are Democrats worried that China may lose money?

In 35 minutes of precision bombing, Trump disabled the Iranian nuclear program that was readying nuclear weapons. Few Iranians and no Americans died. No wider war followed.

And the Democrats still cursed the Trump action.

Did they prefer the Obama-era “Iran Deal” that had brought Iran to the threshold of nuclear acquisition? Did they want theocratic Iran to have nuclear weapons to threaten democratic Israel?

Do Democrats complain that Trump tweets too much and sometimes is crude in his postings?

Not really. California Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to out-Trump on social media.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett responds with scatological attacks.

Democrats in Congress let off f-bombs.

What explains the Democrat nihilism?

One, the prior Biden administration was among the most aimless, corrupt, and unpopular in modern history.

So the contrast with Trump’s successes is too hard to bear.

Two, Democrats so hate Trump the messenger that they seek to destroy his entire message, even when it benefits their own country and the world at large.

If Trump conducts peace, they prefer war. If he wages war on crime, they side with the criminal. If he stops illegal immigration, they want more illegal immigrants.

Three, they fear they have no alternatives to the Trump record, because his agenda is common sense and supported by a majority of Americans.

Fourth, the left cannot stop Trump’s success.

Nothing seems to destroy him — not the raid on his home, not 93 lawfare indictments, not efforts to strike him from state ballots, not two impeachments, not even two assassination attempts.

Instead, all that only made him stronger — and thus more hated.

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