Even giving a Democrat a cursory once-over is no longer an option for civilized people

Occasionally it behooves us to take stock of recent leftist pronouncements and actions, so as to compare them to some point in the not-so-distant past, just to gauge the momentum with which the Left's lunacy has proceeded.

In recent days,

• Bernie Sanders has called for criminals, including jihadists, who are still serving their sentences to be able to vote.
• Elizabeth Warren has called for student loans to be forgiven, college to be "free" and for federal-government jobs to be available to all.
• AOC has said about the VA, a health system so bad that patients commit suicide in its facilities, "If it ain't broke don't fix it."
• No major Democrat has mentioned that the Sri Lanka massacre victims were Christians and the entire subject never came up at the town hall for Dem 2020 presidential candidates. 
• Pete Buttigieg has joined the ranks of those who say that late-term abortion is something that is up to the woman carrying a child.

Hey, we're old enough to remember when the big items on the Dem radar screen were eliminating the Electoral College and airplanes, aren't we?

I've been having another round of bracing exchanges with friends of mine - real friends, and people whose conservative bona fides are in order - because I still reserve the right to point out Donald Trump's objectionable traits when they become a factor in a given development. I think they find it unseemly that anyone would air right-of-center dirty laundry in public, as it might give succor to the enemy.

I politely but firmly insist that Trump's problematic ways must be part of the mix, that overlooking them just to drag him over the political finish line does not get us closer to the kind of country we envision.

Still, I hope they understand that my misgivings do not rise to some kind of conversion experience. I'm not going to be going all Jennifer Rubin - Max Boot any time soon.

The term "binary choice" has become so fraught with layers of tribal interpretation that I hesitate to even mention it, but realities must be faced. Bill Weld is not going to be the Republican 2020 nominee. Not that I'd harbor the first subatomic particle of enthusiasm for him if he were. Let me put the matter a little differently: Ben Sasse, Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw are not going to be running for president in 2020.

And the Democrat party's self-positioning as an enemy of the country in which it exists, as well as the larger Western civilization which makes our entire political process possible, has now reached a point at which it must be the foremost consideration in the mind of any non-Democrat.

Donald Trump has a behavior-and-expression problem. The Democrats have an idea problem. Specifically, their "ideas" are borne of a dark nihilism that no longer even takes any heed of reality.

Each of us will have to come to that moment in November 2020, as we did in 2016, when we check our heart of hearts and ponder the eternal implications of the choice of button to push. However, if one is a moral being with any understanding of the importance of ordered liberty, the array of choices will not be wide open. It will be missing a left side.

It will be as if the voting machine were not even offering a Democrat option.

They've taken themselves out of the game for anyone who retains a shred of humanity.