Will Bunch’s blind spot(s)

Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch is a guilty pleasure for me, as is Christine Flowers, kicked out of the inquirer, but now published in the Delaware County Daily Times.

Bunch is my connection to the Looney Left, Flowers to the Wing-Nut Right.

I agree with her maybe half the time, Bunch 20%. He can turn an occasional good phrase, even if his point of view has an utterly predictable trajectory. While occasionally harsh, Flowers can delight with references that reveal her classical education.

I enjoy good writing, whether or not I agree with it. I think it is important to, um, consume contrary points of view. First, you may learn something new. Or, you may get a good laugh, as when Bunch made passing reference to leafy Lower Merion as “diverse.” This was a prime example of a liberal blind spot, seeing things not as they are but as you wish them to be.

I could not resist the temptation to shoot him a quick email about diversity in Lower Merion: “85% white.  5th highest per-capita income in the country.”

He did not respond, maybe because these are things he despises — white people and the wealth, although he is both. Bless his heart, as they say in the South. 

He next offered his game plan for Dems to make a comeback from the recent election that sounded Democratic alarm bells from Boston to San Francisco. 

Democratic stalwarts like New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and Democratic strategist James Carville were screaming to abandon the USS Woke, but Bunch devised what he believed would be a winning strategy in the cultural wars — voting. 

I remember about a decade ago Bunch detected a world-wide slide to the Left (which was inevitable because Bunch wishes it), just before Donald J. Trump was elected and most of Western Europe shifted right. It’s beginning to shift back again, because that’s what it does — very much like the U.S., which went from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Trump to Joe Biden. Right to left, back and forth, meaning we are generally centrist and can be swayed by anyone with a cool groove and smooth moves. (No, that does not explain Joe Biden.)

In the latest page from his Dream Journal, Bunch believes the wedge that will cut through the opposition  and lead to victory is — voting rights. Hit it! he advises Joe Biden.

I don’t want to argue with him, because he won’t listen to me. But he may listen to the high-quality and nonpartisan Pew Research, which finds voting issues totally absent from the top things on voters minds.  

Here’s the graphic:

Voting rights isn’t on the list.

This means that Bunch and his Marxist buddies would like to make a cultural issue out of it. Kind of like Eagles coach Nick Sirianni using flowers as motivation.

Will it resonate like Critical Race Theory? It will not, even as they pretend and insist CRT is not taught in schools. The subject itself is a college course, but the beliefs within the course have seeped into schools, infuriating parents, white and Black, who don’t want their children indoctrinated to think that they are better or worse than anyone else because of the color of their skin.

The people who deny CRT are at the head of the line screaming about white supremacy, as if that were proven to be in all white hearts. 

Bunch’s most embarrassing public failure was his book, “Tear Down This Myth,” his screed against President Ronald Reagan. 

The interesting thing is that many of the claims he made against Reagan are true — he raised taxes while always opposing tax increases, for instance.

But the book did nothing to change the public’s overwhelmingly positive view of Reagan.

The “why” is in the title of Bunch’s attack — the word “myth.”

Once someone has achieved mythic status, it is almost impossible to unseat them, especially through a vicious attack. People just tune out.

So, now, in the present, while it is true that because Trumpsters have managed to place acolytes on voting boards and in governmental oversight positions, there is a danger of improper election interference, it has to be demonstrated without the usual dyspeptic rage of Trump haters.

Up against issues like the economy, race, health care, jobs, Covid and illegal immigration, they have a tough road.