Both of our major political parties are prone to exaggerate the defects of their opponents, but Democrat Party leaders have developed this strategy into an art form.  Truth is not a concern. 

Let me give you several glaring examples.

Each election season Democrat Party leaders trot out the accusation that the Republicans are hell-bent on destroying Social Security.  Sometimes they accompany the accusation with an image of an old woman in a wheelchair being pushed off a cliff.  Of course, it’s an absolute lie.  During their years of controlling both House and Senate and the Presidency, the Republicans never made a move against Social Security except for a brief reform effort under President George W. Bush.  But he was trying to save the program, not destroy it.  The problem is that Social Security is in real trouble, and something must be done soon to preserve it from fiscal collapse.  Democrats should stop using the issue as a campaign weapon and work with Republicans to make the program more viable.

Despite the long existing precedent designed to insure balanced representation of party house membership in select committees, Nancy Pelosi outmaneuvered Kevin McCarthy and set up a select committee of seven Democrats and two renegade Republicans to investigate Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 riots.  The committee’s work was an affront to American justice.  It concentrated on accusations of Trump’s supposed malfeasance and allowed almost no opportunity for rebuttal or the presentation of exculpatory material.  As one glaring example, there is clear evidence that Trump urged deployment of the National Guard to protect the Capitol prior to January 6, but witnesses who could testify to that fact were never called.  Was Trump’s action consistent with the Democrat’s charge that Trump sought to overthrow the government?

In August 2017 the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, was preparing to remove statues of Confederate heroes from its municipal park.  In response, three disparate groups arrived on the scene.  One group consisted of citizens who were there to support the removal effort.  A second group had assembled to protest removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate notables.  The third group consisted of the trouble makers — neo-fascists, white nationalists, and Klansmen.  Members of that third group were violent, and there were riots and casualties.  Commenting on the incident, Trump condemned the display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.  He then went on to say that there “were very fine people on both sides”, obviously referring to the question of removing the statues.  Later he made it clear that his “fine people” remark did not refer to the neo-fascists or Klansmen.  Nevertheless, Democrat Party leaders immediately condemned Trump for implying moral equivalency between the rioters and those citizens supporting statue removal, a charge that Trump immediately denied.   Now, more than seven years later, Kamala Harris, continues to dishonestly attack Trump for his alleged support of the Charlottesville rioters.

There are many legitimate issues on which Democrats can honestly attack Republican positions.  There is no cause for them to resort to lies and calumny.