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It's nearly 18 months until the election, more than a third of President Trump's first term remaining to him, but Democrats of both the elected and media varieties can't wait to get started with the contest for his putative replacement. And there's no shortage of contestants; you can hardly visit a supermarket or diner in Iowa or New Hampshire without running into...
Well, somebody in sober trousers, rolled-up sleeves, and a fake smile, who looks vaguely familiar, but really you've never heard of them! With Election 2016 having established that national political experience is no requirement for the Presidency, the Democrats are testing this thesis to destruction. No mayor of New York has managed to be elevated to the Oval Office, but why not the mayor of South Bend, Indiana? Senators have a poor track record of making Presidential timber, but maybe if you throw enough of them at the job, one will stick?
The individuals are nearly all unknown, but the numbers are so large that no derisory moniker presents itself. The Three Stooges and the Seven Dwarfs aren't nearly enough; maybe if a few more Dems would throw their hat in the ring, we'd have the Forty Thieves?
Of course, at most two of these nobodies may - possibly - end up a somebody. Everyone including the nobodies knows this; yet like any politician elected to a post higher than dogcatcher, when they look in the mirror a President smiles back. Each one is hoping their breakout moment comes at the Democratic primary debates, when the world - or at least, large numbers of Democrat voters - will be watching.
But why?
There was a time that America's political debates had substance. Even before the Constitution was ratified, its pros were clearly spelled out in the famous Federalist Papers; its cons were put forth in the less-famous but just as relevant Anti-Federalist Papers. Lawyers, students of history, and even ordinary citizens still consult these records to thoroughly understand what our Founders were thinking at the time. The Federalists carried the day, and we have our Constitution; had the Anti-Federalists persuaded America instead, our history would have been wildly different.
The same is true of Lincoln and Douglas; William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley; Nixon and Kennedy; Reagan and Carter - and, yes, Trump and Clinton. No doubt we'll have an equally clear contest between Trump and Fill-in-the-Blank next year.
Sometimes we have clear contrasts even at the primary debates - The Donald was hardly more alike to Low-Energy Jeb and Little Marco than he was to Mrs. Bill Clinton.
But what are today's Democrats intending to argue over? The policy decisions have already been made: abortion on demand and at taxpayer expense, free healthcare for all at taxpayer expense, free education for all at taxpayer expense, and so on down the leftist wishlist. Joe Biden attempted, briefly, to make a sane and principled argument as to why it's a Bad Idea to try to force Americans to pay for something they consider to be an abominable crime against humanity - but then knuckled under to his party's call and abandoned a half-century's support of the Hyde Amendment prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions.
Any limits on the promotion of homosexuality and gender dysphoria as normal and laudable have long since been driven out of the Democratic party. A sensible hesitance at promising reparations to "black people" for slavery, paid for by "white people", regardless of whose actual ancestors owned or was owned? Out of the question!
With nothing to actually debate over, how can nonentities hope to break out from the pack? There's only one way: by saying something so memorable or extreme as to make the nightly news highlights for the week following.
But in so doing, they may be setting up for another earthshaking disappointment next fall, as Middle America rejects a pack of madmen. Yes, Americans do want a pleasant climate in the abstract; the overwhelming majority wouldn't pay 30 cents a day to achieve it, much less the uncountable trillions actually demanded. The more loudly and pointedly Democratic candidates trumpet their climate plans, the more visible the dollars will be and the less appealing the party will become.
On some level, the Dem party elders seem to realize the scope of the problem: in one lonely, startling shred of common sense, they refused to stage a debate dedicated to "climate change." For their voters, what would be the point, as all the candidates believe in it religiously? For non-hardcore-Democrats, though, the sight of candidates competing as to who can destroy our economy and our way of life more aggressively might, just possible, exact a price at the election in November. So, to shrieks of fury from the frothing environmentalist lunatics, the debate planners walked around that particular bear trap.
For lo these many years, Democrats have been able to hide the destructive results of their policies behind an impenetrable media shield supported by the ever-incompetent Republican opposition. Trump plus the Internet has put an end to that, and even the best efforts of Facebook and Twitter to disappear dissenting views can no longer keep the lid on.
America will have its debate, but it won't be on the Democrat stage. It will be in the homes and minds of countless Americans even less prominent than the Democratic candidates, as they compare what they hear with Trump's inarticulate but plain truths, and reach their own conclusions about what's in their best interest.
As the saying goes: pass the popcorn!