Dems’ 2024 Platform Combined The Worst Policies Of Both Parties

As the 2024 presidential election recedes further and further into our collective rearview mirrors, with hindsight comes detached reflection. Now that we can all see past “brat” and “joy” and “Tim Walz is a war hero,” that detached reflection reveals that the Democrats achieved something quite remarkable in 2024: Somehow they managed to synthesize the most hated policies of both major parties over the past 50 years into a single campaign platform.

Whether they meant to or not, and despite Kamala Harris’ generalized unwillingness ever to say anything of substance, their platform crystallized around three key policy areas: 1) the failed bipartisan monetary policies of bygone days, 2) their own contemporary and freakish social policies, and 3) the neocon warmongering that created their long-term heroes, Chimpy McBush Hitler and his loyal sidekick, Darth Cheney Voldemort.

It is as if Democrat Party leadership had a dorm room brainstorming session one night while feasting on Obama THC gummies that ended with, “I know, let’s build a platform that includes all of the most unpopular policies of both parties and call it good!” (I call this “The Democrat Witches’ Brew Failure Platform of 2024,” or the “Platform” for short.)

Monetary Policy

The Platform starts at its most basic level with the failed monetary policies of the last quarter of the 20th century. For you youngsters out there, “stagflation” was an economic cancer that plagued America in some of its worst years. While generally attributed to Democrat Jimmy Carter, the growth in the money supply that occurred under GOP presidents like Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford greatly helped stagflation’s creation, and even Ronald Reagan was hard-pressed to tame it in his first term. Stagflation was characterized by high unemployment, high inflation, and poor economic growth.

Economists tend to agree that stagflation requires a shock to the economic system and unwise growth in the money supply. Well, as Joe Biden took office in 2021, Covid was clearly an unprecedented shock to our economic system, and the predictable Democrat response was to dramatically increase federal spending and inflate the money supply. 

“OK,” you may say, “Covid was extraordinary. What has that got to do with Kamala and 2024?” Well, it has to do with the fact that she never once admitted that the extraordinary increase in the money supply left you unable to buy eggs, toilet paper, and a home mortgage. It has to do with the fact that she blamed inflation on “price gouging” and embraced the same massive federal overspending that put you in that bind in the first place. It has to do with the fact that she promised more of the same under the illusory guise of an “opportunity economy.”

The Democrats promised that the inflation and economic pressures you experienced did not actually exist, while at the same time promising to fix those nonexistent problems with bipartisan policies straight out of the era of GOP Gerald “Whip Inflation Now” Ford and Democrat Jimmy “Malaise” Carter. At its most basic level, the Platform was built on the worst economic policies dredged from the recent histories of both major American political parties.

Social Policy

To this miasma of fetid economic ideas, the Democrats added to the Platform their own special and unique brand of despised social policies, of which these are the highlights:

• The “climate change” scam
• The racist and sexist “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies implemented in the Obama era that have so roiled American discourse
• Doubling down on weird sexual perversions as being normal
• Anti-God, anti-family
• Globalism and multilateralism at the expense of the average American
• Unchecked illegal immigration
• The party of billionaires and Hollywood
• Advantaging foreign workers over U.S. workers
• Abortion

As proof of the Democrats’ political malpractice in these areas, many of the above priorities were actually low priorities for real voters. On the issues that were a high priority for voters, such as illegal immigration, Democrats chose the wrong side. Even on abortion — the one issue where Democrats arguably had a decisive edge — voters seemed satisfied that the Dobbs decision left the matter open to each state to decide.

So there we have it — a foul-smelling, rancid Platform built on the worst economic and social policies of both parties of the past 50 years. However, the Democrats’ THC-fueled, dorm room Platform was not done. They needed to add the pièce de résistance: the Cheney family and their neocon forever wars.

Neocon Foreign Policy

In a nation deeply tired of 20-plus years of global warfare and full of combat veterans disillusioned and frustrated with the outcome of those wars and the tossing away of their sacrifices like yesterday’s trash, the Democrats decided it was a smart move to add to their public-facing team the architect of those forever wars, Dick Cheney, his politically undead daughter, Liz, and a pantheon of lower level GOP staffers who thought endless wars with zero positive outcomes were a good idea. (OBTW, they also decided to pick a VP candidate who ran from those forever wars in a cowardly fashion, alienating almost every veteran who fought and served honorably and bravely.)

Seriously. 

What the H-E-double-toothpicks were the Democrats thinking? 

In the first 12-plus years of the current century, the Democrats built their entire political reputation around the idea that U.S. military adventurism is bad, that sacrificing the lives of our brave youth was a bad idea, that there should be “No Blood for Oil,” and that Dick Cheney and his boss needed to be hauled before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Now all of a sudden Dick Cheney and a potential nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine are good ideas? This is practically inexplicable. Truly.

I never fully agreed or disagreed with the Democrats’ prior positions on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and I served in both of them), but I always respected the integrity of their positions. So what did they do in 2024? They tossed away that integrity, embraced the worst failed ideas of their historic opponents, and in doing so no doubt alienated the Jill Stein wing of their party, costing tens of thousands of votes and maybe the election. What were they thinking?

I mean, seriously, if they were trying to lose, what would they have done differently?

I have my theories. I believe the Democrats initially ran their 2024 campaign on the whims of 27-year-old, green-haired, nose-ringed, Ivy League “studies” majors who not only deeply believed in the factual and moral correctness of what they were taught in college but that most Americans similarly agreed. Then when internal polling started showing a Trump landslide, they thought the solution was to pivot to what they imagined conservative Gen X and Boomer voters believed, hence the Cheney engagement. (i.e., “Yeah those Boomers love sending other people off to die, we’ll get their vote for sure.” Idiots.) Let’s all hope they never listen to James Carville.

I truly believe the only reason Kamala got most of her votes is that the Democrats convinced the dumbs that Trump is Literally Hitler™. It had very little to do with actual policies, which in reality ended up ending the Democrats’ hopes and dreams.

In the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats’ Platform policy choices were the embrace of every bipartisan mistake made by U.S. politicians in recent memory. In economic policy, social policy, foreign policy, and almost every other policy, they made all the wrong choices. Here’s hoping they never figure it out.

Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel and practicing attorney. The Federalist verifies the identity of its pseudonymous authors. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at @CynicalPublius.