By Walter Geiger The level of divisiveness on the national political scene is the highest I can recall in my lifetime. Few, if any, of those in Washington have the term ‘˜non-partisan’ in their vocabularies. It is all ‘˜my side is right and your side is wrong’ with seemingly no effort being made toward compromise on even the simplest of agenda items. With regard to immigration, most Democrats want open borders and most Republicans want a border wall. No one is staking out the middle ground where the most logical solutions likely lie. There are areas where a wall is drastically needed. There are other areas where more high tech surveillance solutions are a better fix. It is the same with abortion. Some democrats seem to be okay with infanticide – the outright killing of babies even after birth – while in many states Republicans are passing heartbeat bills which protect the unborn after about eight weeks in the womb. Again, there is no apparent effort at compromise. These are two hot button issues but there are many others, including the great Russia collusion debate. The Robert Mueller team, rife with Democrats and many openly-hostile legal eagles who actually contributed to the Hillary Clinton campaign, cleared President Trump of collusion but the issue just won’t die. It has sucked all the air out of the room at the capitol and little of the business of actual governing is getting done. Instead we have political theatre that borders on the absurd. All this clouds the fact that our national economy is booming as it never has before. Just this past week we learned unemployment hit a new low, the nation’s average wage hit $27.77 per hour and US employers added 263,000 jobs in April alone. The job market is strong even for high school dropouts. The jobless percentage for Hispanics was the lowest in history and that among women was the lowest since 1953 when working women were still something of a rarity. Americans invested in the stock market, and that includes every individual with an IRA or 401K account through their employer, are seeing monthly gains like never before with no end in sight. Despite much effort to deflect it, President Trump gets credit for that economy and that is why, despite everything thrown at him by the national media, his approval rate is still above 50%. This divisiveness is unlikely to abate with the 2020 presidential elections looming on the horizon and Trump the current odds-on favorite to win reelection. There are, at last count, 22 candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. Most of them you have never heard of. The leaders consist of a confirmed socialist in Bernie Sanders, several who are even farther left than he, an alleged serial fondler in Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed white female Indian in Elizabeth Warren and the openly-gay mayor of South Bend Pete Buttigieg. They each speak to crowds in the dozens and none have gained any real traction. Trump, an unabashed, take-no-prisoners populist, meanwhile holds sold-out rallies all over the country with thousands who couldn’t get in hanging around outside. The ineffectual Democratic slate and the booming economy point toward a Trump win in 2020. Perhaps that will put an end to the divisiveness but I doubt it. What do you think?
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