Opinion

WOOLERY: Democrats Need To Learn Facts Matter More Than Feelings

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.

Chuck Woolery Contributor
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Democrats are finally acknowledging what we’ve always known about them: emotion is the basis of their whole ideology, and facts are just inconvenient obstacles to their extremist ambitions.

Within just a few days of each other, leading Democrats representing both the establishment and progressive wings of the party separately revealed that they and their liberal colleagues have no interest in letting facts or figures get in the way of their moral certitude.

First, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly interrupted a briefing on border security by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, declaring, “I reject your facts” as Nielsen related statistics demonstrating the severity of the illegal immigration crisis.

Pelosi probably thought her verbal snipe was pretty clever, but really it just showed how myopic her thinking really is.

Those four words concisely sum up the Democrats’ entire position on the ongoing partial government shutdown. They don’t want a border wall, so they dismiss all evidence that the wall would be an effective solution to the illegal immigration crisis, or even that there is such a crisis to begin with.

Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-proclaimed democratic-socialist who has made herself a darling of the party’s radical progressive wing, compounded Pelosi’s blunder a few days later in an interview on 60 Minutes with CNN host Anderson Cooper.

Responding to a question about questionable math skills and factual errors, which recently earned her four “Pinocchios” from fact-checkers at the ultra-liberal Washington Post, Ocasio-Cortez lashed out at her critics, deriding the idea that she should be expected to adhere to factual accuracy.

“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” she sniffed, only conceding that being factually correct is “important” after being prompted by Cooper.

Her comments are even more revealing — and more concerning — than Pelosi’s. Whereas Pelosi’s remark can be written off as a political stunt intended to score partisan points on a specific issue, Ocasio-Cortez was issuing something more along the lines of a sweeping philosophical pronouncement.

It’s true that Ocasio-Cortez is still a relatively young woman, but she is well past the age when most people grow out of whatever utopian notions they may have harbored in their college days, suggesting that she is unlikely to evolve her thinking beyond the sort of class-warfare rhetoric that got her elected. Given that she holds one of the safest seats in Congress, she’ll be in a position to keep spouting her emotionally-driven policy ideas for years to come.

It’s not just radical policy proposals that we have to worry about from the fact-deniers in the Democrat Party, though. Political gridlock will remain a frustrating part of life for as long as the Democrats refuse to consider facts or reason when it comes to debating policy — after all, someone who is convinced that they are morally right cannot embrace compromise without sacrificing principle.

Still, we can take some solace from the fact that Democrats are at least acknowledging that they value feelings over facts. Admitting that you have a problem, as they say, is the first step toward getting help.

Chuck Woolery is the former host of Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection. He currently hosts Blunt Force Truth.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.