The modern Democratic Party has fallen completely out-of-touch with American values. To appeal to its radical base leading up to 2020, the Party has become a twisted caricature of its former self.
Get rid of private health care? Abolish ICE? Kill babies after birth? Enact 90 percent marginal income tax rates? Retrofit every single building in America in 10 years? Threaten members of the president’s family with subpoena power? Federalize huge parts of our election system?
Listening to a Democrat, it doesn’t take long to realize it’s no longer the party of John F. Kennedy. In fact, President Kennedy’s ideas would get booed off the debate stage in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Kennedy believed in equal treatment under the law and personal responsibility. On the campaign trail, he once told supporters, “I do not believe that Washington should do for the people what they can do for themselves through local and private effort.”
He believed every American had a civic duty to make meaningful contributions to society. “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” he famously said in his 1961 inaugural address.
In the short time he served in the Oval Office, President Kennedy oversaw an economic turnaround that propelled the U.S. economy to a 6.6 percent growth rate and 3.8 percent unemployment by 1966 (which would have been his fifth year in office).
He accomplished this feat with supply-side economics. Kennedy believed tax cuts would generate enough economic growth to keep the budget deficit under control. In the fiscal year following the tax cuts, the U.S. federal budget deficit shrunk, and the Dow Jones industrial average almost doubled.
President Kennedy was no small-government libertarian, but his positions were nuanced and thoughtful, two qualities that spark the ire of today’s rising stars in the Democratic Party, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Kamala Harris.
In the modern Democratic Party, there is no room for policy debate. There is only room for character attacks and fear-mongering.
When Republicans passed tax cuts in 2017, the so-called progressive Left had a complete meltdown. Rep. Nancy Pelosi called the tax cuts “armageddon,” the “end of the world,” and “one of the worst bills in the history of the United States of America.”
Larry Summers, former National Economic Council director to President Obama, claimed tens of thousands of Americans would die from tax reform. That is one hell of an accusation to make.
Looking back, we now know the GOP tax cuts will save the average family at least $1,000/year and have sparked tremendous economic growth, just like JFK would have intended. And miraculously enough, we all survived to tell the tale.
If President Kennedy were alive today, the rising stars in the Democratic Party would shut him down. They would lecture him that America’s best days are behind her. That recession and layoffs are just around the corner. That equality is at the lowest point it’s ever been.
They would tell him to forget about Camelot – doom and gloom are the new pillars of the Democratic Party platform. They would kindly show JFK the door.
You know we are living in extreme times when JFK doesn’t have a place in the Democratic Party.
Noah Wall (@NoahwWall) is vice president of advocacy at FreedomWorks, a nationwide grassroots organization dedicated to lower taxes, smaller government, individual liberty and the American rule of law.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
