Democrats, stop groveling

Memo to Democratic presidential candidates: Stop it. Just stop it. Lose the sycophancy. Reclaim your dignity. Eat chicken however you naturally would. Don’t invent languages — there’s no such tongue as Swiss — just to win points.

It’s good to be relatable, and a little humor, if unforced, goes a long way. But there’s a line between courting and groveling, between reaching out and rolling over. And in this early stage of the 2020 campaign, Gillibrand, Booker and too many other contenders for their party’s presidential nomination may be losing sight of it.

Have they learned nothing from Donald Trump? I’m not suggesting that he’s some shining model and sagacious tutor, but he did go farther in politics than he had any right to, and a few of the reasons are worth noting and maybe even emulating, if only out of pragmatism. One of those is the impression he gave — or maybe I should say the illusion he wove — of not caring too much about what people thought. If they were shocked, so be it. If they were offended, boohoo. He was his own gilded man, going his own grotesque way.