A perfect capstone piece to several days' worth of tracking the Democratic Left coming unglued in the age of President Trump. It's not just random lefty neo-fascists endorsing physical violence, or historically-illiterate activists inveighing about the president being more dangerous than Hitler. It's leading candidates for the DNC Chairmanship openly flirting with calls for impeachment, and major candidates for statewide office making unhinged, beyond-the-pale comparisons. First up is New Jersey's presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee going Full Godwin on Trump:
I have lived in Germany twice – once as a private citizen and once as the United States ambassador, and I’m a modest student of Germany history. And I know what was being said about somebody else in the 1920s. And you could unfortunately drop in names from today into those observations from the 1920’s, and the moves that have been made early on only aid and abet that argument.”
He doesn't mention the president by name, but the implication is hardly subtle. As the conservative blog Save Jersey notes, Murphy is campaigning against "bullies" like Trump and Gov. Chris Christie, yet he can't resist a gratuitous Nazi reference while analyzing his political opponents. More than 1.6 million New Jerseyans voted for Trump in November. Meanwhile, in Virginia, former Congressman and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello likened the election of Donald Trump to the September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks in which nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered by terrorists:
"The election of Donald Trump was a little bit like, you know, a political and constitutional September 11 for us, if I can be honest."
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Yikes. Perriello now says he regrets the grotesque comparison. The Washington Free Beacon points out that he wasn't the first person to invoke the horrors of 9/11 while grappling with the 2016 election outcome: "The day after the election, Mother Jones editor in chief Clara Jeffery wrote that she hadn't felt as 'gutted since [she] watched the Twin Towers fall.' Sports reporter Bart Hubboch was fired by the New York Post for a tweet comparing the election of Trump to the terrorist attack. David Crosby of 'Crosby, Stills, and Nash' said that the election was "about as bad as 9/11, or maybe worse, because the consequences are much longer-reaching.'" For what it's worth, because of the state's blue tint and the outgoing Republican incumbent's extraordinarily terrible approval rating, Murphy is in a strong position to win that election -- a likely Democratic pick-up. The Virginia race should be very competitive; a GOP win there would off-set the party's loss in New Jersey. And if you're in the mood to follow another potentially-indicative election even sooner than this coming fall, watch the special election in Georgia to replace newly-installed HHS Secretary Tom Price. It should be a GOP hold on paper, but Trump barely won the district, and the Left is energized. The "jungle primary" is in April, with a likely run-off in June.
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