"They don’t have anybody who can win the general"

Two weeks ago, I assessed the Democrat presidential candidates by citing an Old Gold cigarettes slogan, "Not a cough in a carload." There is not a president in a carload of Democrat candidates.

Democrats have begun admitting it.

The Washington Post reported, "When the 2020 Democratic presidential contest kicked off earlier this year, the massive field was hailed as the most diverse in history, with candidates who spanned the ideological spectrum and offered enough in a broad buffet of options to excite any voter. But after 10 months of campaigning and 15 hours of nationally televised debates, another emotion is rising: anxiety.

"Party leaders and activists are citing weakness in all of the leading contenders, including former vice president Joe Biden, who has been forced on the defensive about his family’s ethics, performed haltingly in debates and set off alarms with his poor fundraising. They also fret that the two other top-ranking candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are too liberal to win a general election. Other candidates have had moments to shine, but none yet have fully transformed that into anything approaching momentum."

I do not link pay sites.

The story also said, "John Coale, a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, was more blunt. 'They don’t have anybody who can win the general,' he said."

Of course not. Consider that the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is running fourth in the polls and second in money raised. He's 37. I have glasses older than that. He's a novelty act.

No one believes he would make a good president, but there he is battling for the nomination against an Indian, an old socialist, and a crook -- plus 20 other people besides Elizabeth Warren.

The Post reported, "In conversations with 17 state and national party leaders, nearly all expressed some level of unease with where the field stands and a deepening concern that, even as Trump suffers through one of the darkest phases of his presidency, the leading presidential contenders would struggle mightily in a one-on-one contest with him. For all of his challenges, Trump commands a gigantic operation that has vacuumed up unprecedented sums of money, an unparalleled megaphone to lure in voters and a lock on most of the Republican Party. Democrats face the possibility of a long primary fight that could cleave the party along ideological and generational lines and leave the nominee campaigning against an incumbent whom Democrats see as simultaneously weak and hard to beat."

Democrats wonder if that is all there is but there is no more. This is it. Unless Michelle Obama pulls a Lurleen Wallace, Democrats will nominate one of these fools or Hillary.

The money men have looked through the party's governors and senators, and even its mayors, and this is the best they came up with. Democrats are like the Cleveland Indians of the 1980s when the farm system was the team itself, as it fielded minor leaguers.

Where have you gone, Joe Charboneau? Cleveland turned its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.

Democrats did this to themselves by going coastal. They produce senators who know Washington like the back of their hand but know little about the country they would lead.

The party has been unable to convert a governor of California or New York into a president. The last big state governor Democrats elected president was FDR -- 87 years ago.

The poor quality of presidential candidates shows a party out of touch with America. The problem may extend beyond 2020 if Democrats are not careful.

But the plan is to nominate a lightweight and bring down President Donald John Trump with impeachment. This has never happened before, and I believe it is for good reason. The flaw is that this strips the election of any policy debates, reducing the race to a celebrity death match.

President Trump will win that handily.

David Winston wrote, "Base Democrats may be getting what they wanted with impeachment, but they are sacrificing precious time that could be used to make their case to independents. That situation isn’t likely to change until these independent voters hear something of substance from Democrats, which is why the Schiff 'parody,' among other impeachment missteps, was such a disaster for them."

In 1872, the Democrat Party nominated no one, instead it backed a third party candidate, Horace Greeley, the journalist now best known for writing, "Go west, young man." The party regrouped and four years later won a majority of the votes under Samuel J. Tilden. The Supreme Court and the Electoral College did him in.

Instead of impeachment, Democrats should look five years ahead. Foolishly they pursue a folly marinated in stupidity. The 2020 election is beginning to look a lot like Monday's Patriots-Jets game.