* Democrat Quotes About Transforming America & Following Their Totalitarian Impulses
The Democratic Party views America as a nation that is systemically infested with white racism, and thus, as a nation in need of immediate, sweeping, fundamental “transformation”:
● Perhaps most famously, Barack Obama, during an October 2008 campaign stop in Columbia, Missouri five days before Election Day, said: “Now, Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days…. [W]e are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
● By no means was that the first time Obama had voiced his desire to bring fundamental transformation to the U.S. Eighteen years earlier, in an interview published by the Daily Herald on March 3, 1990, Obama said: “There’s certainly racism here [at Harvard Law School]. There are certain burdens that are placed [on blacks], more emotionally at this point than concretely…. Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we’re going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous. I mean, I really hope to be part of a transformation of this country.”
● On July 17, 2007, presidential candidate Obama spoke before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to advocate for the expansion of abortion rights and said: “That struggle for equality is not over, and now we are at one of those rare moments where we can actually transform our politics in a fundamental way. But it’s going to take … millions of voices coming together to insist that it’s not enough just to stand still. That it’s not enough to safeguard the gains of the past—that it is time to be resolute and time to march forward…. When we have achieved as one voice a strong call for that kind of more fair and more just America, then I am absolutely convinced that we’re not just going to win an election, but more importantly we’re going to transform this nation.
● When candidate Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) in July 2008, he said: “It’s been the work of this organization [NCLR] for four decades – lifting up families and transforming communities across America…. By living up to the ideals that this organization has always embodied, the ideals reflected in your name, ‘Raza,’ the people. [Actually, a literal translation is “the race.”] … And together, we won’t just win an election; we will transform this nation.”
● In 2016, the Democrat Party’s official platform said: “Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society. We will challenge and dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity. … We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.” In a similar spirit, the party platform of 2020 lamented the “historic wrongs and abuses perpetrated against Native Americans, two and a half centuries of slavery, a hundred years of Jim Crow segregation, and a history of exclusionary immigration policies have created profound and lasting inequities … for communities of color.”
● During the 2020 presidential campaign, Democrat nominee Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders produced a document called the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations,” which lamented “the scourge of anti-Black racism” in the United States. Meanwhile, Biden on his own charged that “White America” has been too reluctant to acknowledge that “systemic racism” has “been built into every aspect of our system.” Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris struck a similar note: “The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human… It’s no wonder people are taking to the streets [to protest]. And I support them.” Harris also called for doing away with Columbus Day and replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day because “we are the scene of a crime when it comes to what we did with slavery and Jim Crow and institutionalized racism in this country.” Reasoning from the foregoing premises, the Democrats again advocated far-reaching societal transformation:
● At a March 26, 2019 presidential campaign event in New York City, Joe Biden said: “We all have an obligation to do nothing less than change the culture in this country. This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.”
● In October 2019, then-presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said in a tweet: “Our campaign is not only about changing the system politically and economically. We will change the value system of this country.”
● On April 13, 2020, Biden said “we can transform this nation … so that [my administration] goes down in history … as one of the most progressive administrations since Roosevelt.”
- Analysis: In the progressive worldview, the proper role of government is not to confine itself to regulating a limited range of human activities as the founders stipulated, but rather to inject itself into whatever realms the times seem to demand. Progressives call for a more activist government whose regulation of people’s lives is properly determined not by the outdated words of an anachronistic Constitution, but by whatever the American people seem to need at any given time. This perspective dovetails with the progressives’ notion of an “evolving” or “living” Constitution,” connoting the idea that the U.S. Constitution is a malleable document with no permanent guiding principles. Author and scholar R.J. Pestritto writes that the progressives of the early 20th century “detested the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they detested the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the scope of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult.” Given their contempt for those documents, the progressives’ mission was to progress, or move beyond, the principles laid out by the founders. As its name indicates, progressivism suggests movement toward a goal – in this case, bigger government and increased state control. But it is a gradual, incremental movement rather than a sudden transformation.)
● On May 4, 2020, Biden characterized the coronavirus pandemic as an “incredible opportunity … to fundamentally transform the country.”
● During a May 11, 2020 podcast in which Biden was interviewing former Democrat presidential rival Andrew Yang, both men agreed that the U.S. needed to make radical changes in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. Said Biden: “We need some revolutionary institutional changes in how we do things…. [W]e need an environment in the wake of this revolution, [where] everybody has a chance to be part of the mix, though it’s not self-evident exactly how to do that.”
● In early June 2020, Biden said that America needs to make “revolutionary institutional changes.”
● On July 4, 2020, Biden pledged to “transform” America and “rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country.”
● On July 13, 2020, Biden promised to implement “systemic” and “institutional” changes to American society.
● In August 2020, Bernie Sanders, who had dropped out of the presidential race, said that “when Joe Biden is elected president, when we have a Democratic House, when we have a Democratic Senate, we can begin the process of transforming this government and our nation.”
● In a September 30, 2020 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer stated that “everything is on the table” if Democrats were to win both the White House and a majority in the U.S. Senate, including turning Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. into states. “I’m not busting my chops to become majority leader to do very little or nothing,” he said. “We are going to get a whole lot done. And as I’ve said, everything, everything is on the table.” “I would — believe me, on D.C. and Puerto Rico, particularly if Puerto Rico votes for it, D.C. already has voted for it and wants it. I’d love to make them states,” Schumer elaborated. He also said that Senate Democrats were “using all the tactics we can” to slow down or block the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
● On October 29, 2020, Joe Biden said: “Five days left [until election day]. Five days. I believe when you use your power, the power of the vote, we literally are going to change the course of this country for generations to come.”
● On the afternoon of November 7, 2020 — shortly after America’s largest media networks had announced that Joe Biden had won the Electoral College vote in the disputed 2020 presidential election — Schumer, raising a clenched left fist for emphasis, told a jubilant crowd of supporters in Brooklyn: “Now we take Georgia, and then we change the world! Now we take Georgia, and then we change America!” (This was a reference to the two upcoming Senate runoff elections slated for January 5, 2021 in Georgia; if the Democrats could win both, they would gain control of the U.S. Senate.)
● In a January 30, 2021 interview with Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s Politics Nation, Schumer, who was now the Senate Majority Leader, re-emphasized his commitment to enacting transformational change to the United States:
“Well, Rev., we have one goal: big, bold change in America. We would like the Republicans to join us in some of those things at least, and maybe they will. But we are going to get that change no matter what. We cannot — there is such a demand, three huge issues we have to do: climate, huge issue facing the country, racial and economic inequality, which has gotten worse, not better, which demands change and justice in a big, bold way, and improving our democracy. Making D.C. a state, automatic voter registration, getting rid of Citizens United, all the things embodied in H.R. 1, which the House passed and McConnell would block up, but we’re going to fight to pass it in the Senate. That’s why we’ve made it S 1. So, climate, racial inequality, economic inequality, and democracy, improving our democracy, letting people vote much more easily, dealing with D.C. and Puerto Rican statehood, dealing with bad money that flows in. The John Lewis Act, undoing the horrible decisions the court made, which defanged the Voting Rights Act, and that’s why Republicans have gotten away with taking people’s right away to vote for the last four years.”
Sharpton then asked, “What about [ending] the [Senate] filibuster?” Schumer replied, “Well, as I’ve said, we will find a way to do big, bold change. And our caucus will sit down and figure it out, but failure is not an option. We must create change.”
That was Schumer’s position, even though the Democrats had gotten no electoral mandate from the American people. The Democrats held only a slim advantage of 10 seats in the House of Representatives, and the Senate was split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing the tie-breaking vote.
Below are additional quotes that give voice to the Democratic Party’s totalitarian impulses:
● In January 2013, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro spoke with CBS News’ Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation and predicted that because of immigration from Central America — both legal and illegal — the state of Texas would soon change from majority-Republican to majority-Democrat. Said Castro: “In a couple of presidential cycles, you’ll be on election night, you’ll be announcing we’re calling the 38 electoral votes of Texas for the Democratic nominee for president. It’s changing. It’s going to become a purple state and then a blue state, because of the demographics, because of the population growth of folks from outside of Texas …”
● On March 7, 2021, Senator Mazie Hirono told MSNBC’s The Sunday Show that if Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to block President Biden’s agenda, Democrats would dispense with the filibuster rule: “When Mitch McConnell gets his way and decides to be an obstructionist, every major bill that President Biden wants, I think there will be a growing reality and recognition that we’re going to need to do filibuster reform. And I am open to it because if we’re going to continue to require 60 votes, you can bet that Mitch McConnell is going to do everything he can to obstruct every major bill that Joe Biden wants to get done. Mitch McConnell’s goal is to retake the Senate. That is, has goals. That’s where he’s going. We Democrats should be very clear-eyed about what we need to do. So filibuster reform, yes, that will come. That’s what I believe.”
● In a separate interview with CNN on March 5, 2021, Senator Hirono said: “I definitely support filibuster reform, and part of that is ending the filibuster. It could be totally, or it could be for certain kinds of bills, but I’m definitely open to making those kinds of changes so we can get things done that helps people, as opposed to not doing anything, which is the Republicans’ posture.”
● At a March 16, 2021 press conference, Senator Charles Schumer spoke in part about the prospect of Democrats either dispensing with the Senate filibuster rule, or circumventing it by means of the budget reconciliation process (by which bills can pass by a simple majority and do not require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster). Among his remarks were the following: “[W]e Democrats, all of us believe we need big, bold change. As I’ve said before, we hope our Republican colleagues will work with us to produce that change. We will try to get them to work with us. But if not, we will put our heads together and figure out how to go. And everything is on the table…. [W]e’re going to try to work with Republicans wherever we can…. But we must get bold change. And if our Republican friends block it, we’re going to put our heads together and figure out the best way to go. Everything’s on the table. It’s plain and simple.”
● On March 19, 2021, Senator Dianne Feinstein released a statement saying that, contrary to her previously articulated position, she was now supportive of ending the Senate filibuster. “There are many significant issues Congress needs to address,” she explained, including “gun violence, violence against women, and hate in the tragic shootings in Atlanta.” “Ideally the Senate can reach bipartisan agreement on those issues, as well as on a voting rights bill,” Feinstein wrote in a press release. “But if that proves impossible and Republicans continue to abuse the filibuster by requiring cloture votes, I’m open to changing the way the Senate filibuster rules are used.”
● Shortly after two mass shootings — one in Boulder, Colorado, and another in Atlanta, Georgia — that had killed a combined total of 18 people, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced on March 24, 2021 that President Biden was planning to issue not just legislative proposals, but also executive orders, to address the issue of gun violence. The executive orders, she explained, would be forthcoming soon because Biden was “not waiting for anything to fail” in Congress.
● In a June 23, 2021 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Senator Bob Menendez said he was in favor of enacting a “democracy exception” to the filibuster rule in order to enable Democrats to pass the “For the People Act,” their radical “election-reform” bill, with a simple majority in the U.S. Senate. Asked if there might be common ground to be found with Republicans on the issue of election reform, Menendez said: “Well, look, I hope that we can reach common ground. Preserving the right to vote and the ability to cast that vote is the very essence of representative democracy. Yet, what we see across the country over 400 actions taken by Republican legislatures and introducing bills that restrict the right to vote, that makes it far more difficult to cast a vote, particularly in minority communities. That’s a telltale sign of where Republicans really are at. So it is my hope that if it wasn’t for The for People Act, that then tell us what you’re for at the end of the day to see what we can come together on common ground, at least to advance some of the democracy gains that we should be having in our society and make sure that everybody who is eligible to vote gets that right to vote and it gets to do it relatively in an easy fashion.”
“The reality is that we don’t have 60 votes in the United States Senate,” Menendez continued, “and for so long as the filibuster rule continues to be the rule in the history of the Senate, then we’re going to have a challenge on some of these big things. But I will say it takes two to tango. So, if I invite you to do things, whether it’s on infrastructure or voting rights and you basically say no, then it creates the impetus for some to consider what is necessary to be done to change the rules to permit maybe at least a democracy exception. Because this is the very core of our government and how we proceed, and it affects all other things.”
At that point, Tapper asked: “So you would support getting rid of the filibuster for an election reform bill exclusively, not just in general?” The senator replied: “In the absence of any visible demonstration by Republicans to come to the table and broaden the scope of how we make the right to vote is enhanced how do we get dark money out of our system, how do we ultimately have greater transparency in the funding of elections, I would consider that.”
● On June 11, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice was “applying scrutiny” to various battleground states’ post-election audits of the hotly disputed 2020 races and was offering “guidance” vis-a-vis those audits. That is, the DOJ might consider placing roadblocks in the way of the audits if the Department felt that they ran afoul of federal laws meant to protect voting records and prevent voter intimidation. Added Garland: “We are scrutinizing new laws that seek to curb voter access and where we see violations we will not hesitate to act. We are also scrutinizing current laws and practices in order to determine whether they discredit against black voters and other voters of color. Particularly concerning with in this regard are several studies showing that in some jurisdictions nonwhite voters must wait in line substantially longer than white voters to cast their ballots.”
Eleven days later, on June 22, 2021, Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill the For The People Act, a radical “election reform” bill supported by nearly every Democrat in both the House and Senate. Three days after that, on June 25, Garland announced that the Justice Department was suing Georgia over the state’s Election Integrity Act (SB 202), which had been signed into law in late March. The aim of Garland and the Democrats was to use the DOJ lawsuit to achieve the same objectives as they had sought, but failed, to gain via the legislative process with the For The People Act. Said Garland in his announcement:
“Today, the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Garland said. “Our complaint alleges that recent changes to Georgia’s election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Several studies show that Georgia experienced record voter turnout and participation rates in the 2020 election cycle. Approximately 2/3 of eligible voters in the state cast a ballot in the November election, just over the national average. This is cause for celebration. But then, in March of 2021, Georgia’s legislature passed SB202. Many of that law’s provisions make it harder for people to vote. The complaint alleges that the state enacted those restrictions with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”
Contrary to Garland’s assertion, however, SB 202 simply sought to restore some of the same election-integrity measures — e.g., voter ID requirements — that had been in place prior to the changes that were made to the state’s election laws as a result of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the provisions of SB 202 actually made it easier to vote in Georgia, than had been the case prior to 2020.
● On July 22, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill that would strip Facebook, Twitter, and other online platforms of many of the the liability protections they had traditionally enjoyed as a result of the law known as Section 230, which shields Internet platforms from being sued for permitting content generated by their users and other third parties to be posted. Klobuchar’s bill called for the elimination of this protection in cases where the platforms were being used to spread “misinformation” about coronavirus vaccines or other matters that the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) may designate as public-health emergencies. HHS would likewise be the arbiter of constitutes health misinformation.
Said Klobuchar: “[T]he misinformation on the internet, which is something I’m personally taking on, is outrageous. These are the biggest, richest companies in the world that control these platforms, and they’ve got to take this crap off. We’re in a public health crisis — we still are — we’ve seen major improvement thanks to the vaccines, the ingenuity of people, Biden administration getting this out, but this is holding us back. Two-thirds of the people that are not vaccinated believe something that they read on the internet. That’s all the facts I need. That’s from a Kaiser Foundation Report. So I’m going to introduce a bill to limit the misinformation on vaccines by saying you guys are liable if you don’t take it off your platforms.”
As political analyst Daniel Greenfield noted: “The government dictating content to a social media monopoly that controls 80% of social media is de facto government censorship. And that’s an attack on the Constitution.”