The poor Democrats: As the Russia collusion/Mueller investigation issue disappeared into nothingness like so much skywriting wisping away into the winds, so too did the surefire issue with which the Dems thought the White House would automatically be theirs in 2020.  The candidate himself was irrelevant, an afterthought.  We have it in the bag, the Dems thought.  It's just a matter of to which person we bestow the privilege of the presidency this time around.  Let's pick a good one: a woman.  No, a woman of color.  No, a gay.  No, a Hispanic.  Perhaps an American Indian.

But that slam-dunk Russia issue is gone.  Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff are still flailing about, trying to collect their "undeniable" Russian collusion evidence and convince the rest of the Democratic caucus to initiate impeachment proceedings.

It looks doubtful that that's going to come to pass.  So the "president's a crook" angle apparently is not going to deliver a greased downhill slide into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the Democrats.  It appears — at this juncture, at least — that the Democrats will actually have to come up with a convincing policy platform in order to win the White House.  They'll have to identify substantive issues of actual importance and persuade enough undecideds that the Democratic Party will improve their lives and make the country safer and more prosperous.

What are their issues?  What are the candidates putting forth thus far?  Does any of them seem like a game-changer, the lynchpin to electoral victory?

One policy they've all put forth, in one form or another, is a single-payer government-run health care system, sometimes referred to as Medicare for All.  Almost all the Dems propose the elimination of the private insurance industry in favor of a European-style system.  After all, health care is a "right," not a "privilege."

Ah, but the devil is in the details.  How, in actuality, do we get rid of the insurance industry?  What happens to those millions of workers?  How do we set up the federal health care bureaucracy?  How long will that take?  Medicare currently covers 80% of the Part B expenses — where will other the 20% come from that is currently funded by private insurance programs?  Or will this new Medicare for All now cover all 100%?  Has that been figured into the cost estimates?  No Democratic candidate ever says.  They probably haven't thought it through that far; they probably don't even know.  Getting rid of the private insurance industry is a pipe dream, a hollow talking point.  It will simply never happen.  Never, and the Dems know it.

Free college tuition and forgiveness of student debt are also a popular talking point for many of the Dems.  Some candidates want to cancel student debt altogether.  There's never a mention of actual details, however.  Debt for private universities or just public ones?  Sanders and others say tuition should be free to public college, but they never specify which debt they're going to forgive.  What about students who've recently paid back their loans?  Do they get reimbursed?  Is there a look-back period, a sliding scale of partial reimbursement?  Who will pay the financial institutions the money they're owed if the loans are forgiven?  No one ever says.  That's because it's just a talking point, a lie.

Another one is reparations for slavery as punishment for "white privilege."  This one is especially rich with bogusity, even by present-day Democratic standards.  How will this be determined?  Will everyone's ethnic background be researched, and by whom?  Do reparations apply only to those of actual African heritage?  What about dark-skinned persons from, say, South America or the Caribbean?  Do they qualify?  What will happen with people of mixed heritage?  Barack Obama and Halle Berry, to use two well known examples, are progeny of mixed white-black parentage.  Would they be qualified for just 50% of the award?  If ever there was an intentionally disingenuous, empty-headed policy proposal, this is it.

The Democrats want to rescind the tax cuts, and they all brag that they'll do it on their "first day."  As was the case when President George W. Bush cut taxes, the Democrats automatically yell, "Tax cuts for the rich!" whenever there is a tax cut.  It's a risible claim.  Ask any middle-class blue-collar worker earning $60,000 a year if he wants to give back his $130/month tax cut to the government.  "Sure, I don't need it, I don't like getting my monthly gasoline essentially for 'free.'  You can keep your $130, as long as I have the satisfaction of knowing that Mitt Romney's taxes are going up, too."  It's not that Joe Average wants Romney's taxes to go up.  Mr. Average doesn't care about Romney; he cares about himself and his family.  Kamala Harris and Joe Biden — and the others — are the ones who will take personal pleasure in raising taxes on the Mitt Romneys of the world.

The list goes on — the Green new Deal, open borders and the decriminalization of illegal entry into the country, free health care for illegal aliens.  LGBTQ issues taken to bizarre extremes, such as males being allowed to unfairly compete as females in sports and men who "identify as women" being allowed in women's and girls' locker rooms and bathrooms.

Such is the Democratic platform for 2020.  Nothing the Democrats are proposing so far is grounded in even the slimmest notion of feasibility or reality.  None of their latest proposals can or will ever happen.  They're all just empty promises of free giveaways, made to ignorant, greedy voters, the "low information" voters.  Eliminating the insurance industry, free college tuition, reparations, the Green New Deal, none of those will ever happen, ever.  The Democrats are not running on any legitimate policy proposals — nothing about finding and producing new energy, nothing about keeping the country safer, no actual ideas to help grow the economy and raise employment, nothing at all about meeting any international challenges in Iran, the Middle East, Russia or elsewhere.

Instead, now that the "Russia-Russia-Russia!" issue is gone, the Democrats have taken to promising anything, saying anything — no matter how outlandish — in order to win back their voters and defeat President Trump.

Any voter with even half a brain can see right through this.  Therein lies the danger for President Trump.

Image: Guardian News via YouTube.