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Glenn K. Beaton: The 2020 Dem spectacle: Spartacus and the Native American

Glenn K. Beaton
The Aspen Beat

Democrats have demanded recounts, challenged the Electoral College, shot Republican congressmen playing softball, shot themselves in the foot, yelled obscenities at the president, claimed Russian collusion, assaulted conservative campus speakers and worn pink hats.

But Donald Trump is still president. So Dems are now down to their last resort: Defeating him in the next presidential election.

But with whom? Or as a Dem would say, with who? Joe Biden is too old, Barrack Obama is too 2008 and Hillary is, well, too Hillary.



Ah, but the Dems have nothing if not a deep and diverse bench. Take their junior senator from New Jersey, a fellow who declared in the senate’s nationally televised Supreme Court nominee hearings, “I am Spartacus.”

Well, I suppose “I am Spartacus” has a better ring to it than “I am Slick Willy.”




This man’s claim to be the leader of a Roman slave rebellion two millennia ago rests on, he grandstanded, his violation of senate rules. He bragged that he’d released confidential documents about the nominee to the press.

He evidently thinks that’s something Spartacus would do. He dared the Republicans to discipline him for his rule-breaking the same way the Romans disciplined the other Spartacus for his rule-breaking. Well, maybe not exactly the same way.

It made great spectacle for a moment, at least in relation to the rest of the tiresome circus. What courage! What leadership! What resistance!

What bull.

It turned out that the so-called confidential documents had already been released from confidentiality the night before. Spartacus knew that, as did everyone else. This big resistance moment was staged for the television cameras.

Leave it to a Dem to abide by the rules the one time he wants to get caught breaking them.

At the time of that Supreme Court nomination, there was no evidence that Spartacus — formerly a guy from New Jersey named Cory Booker — had ever heard of the nominee. Nor had Spartacus read any of the nominee’s 300-some judicial opinions and many other writings which earned him praise from scores of legal scholars and Supreme Court practitioners of all political stripes and every single one of his 33 liberal and conservative female law clerks over the course of a decade.

But when the cameras are rolling, who needs facts? Spartacus promptly proclaimed that this man who coaches his daughter’s softball team and feeds the homeless at a soup kitchen is “evil.”

That’s how Booker became Spartacus. Or Batman. Or maybe Johnny Carson or anything else that might get people to tune in. Meanwhile, our valiant hero is already packing his rubber sword for the 2020 primaries in Iowa.

If only the first Spartacus had been as versatile as this Jersey one.

Then there’s the blond and blue-eyed Dem senator from Massachusetts who boasted she is part Cherokee to maneuver her way up the ladder of quota-conscious academia.

Skeptics have suggested she take a DNA test to prove her bona fides. She apparently has taken that test privately and didn’t like the results, because she refuses to take one publicly. Instead, she tells us to trust those high cheekbones of hers (which sounds vaguely racist to me).

Real native Americans remain unconvinced. And they’re unhappy because her bogus claim stole a seat in the affirmative action derby. But native Americans don’t matter to the Dems because there aren’t many of them and they don’t vote much.

Trump characteristically skewered her with a name as devastating as it is politically incorrect. I won’t repeat it because mocking a person for falsely claiming to be native American to manipulate the quota system is racist if the person is a Dem.

So which will the Dems nominate for president in 2020? How can the Dems choose between such worthy cinema?

I have the solution. Spartacus for president and the other one for his VP. Oh, but that wouldn’t be fair to the Dem identity group of women falsely claiming to be Native American.

How about the other one for president and Spartacus for her VP? Oh, but that wouldn’t be fair to the Dem identity group of guys from Jersey who think they’re Spartacus.

Maybe a fake co-presidency shared by the fake Spartacus and the fake Native American, where each gets a plastic trophy for participating.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will decide on a real president to lead the nation.

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