PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The headline to this blog makes a point what won’t be true for me.

I will not vote for Trump in 2020, give his complete lack of character and the continuing untruths of his “act” as president, which resembles an infomercial for his brand – whatever that is.

What may be good for Trump is that many Democrats are lurching so far left you would have to design a new political spectrum to place them on it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the leftward lurch is apparent on issue after issue, as follows:

• Climate change is now an urgent crisis that demands eliminating not merely the coal industry but all fossil fuels.
• Enforcing immigration laws that were once passed by bi-partisan majorities in Congress is now inhumane.
• Free health care for Americans isn’t enough; now it must also be an entitlement for any foreign migrant who enters the U.S.
• College loans must be forgiven in part or whole, and tuition now must be free.
• Taxes must be raised to rates unheard of since the 1960s because, as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio put it, money is “just in the wrong hands.”
• The Electoral College must be killed to save American democracy, and the Supreme Court must be packed with more Justices because the left now sometimes loses decisions.

The WSJ adds that it is not clear why the Ds have gone so far left so fast.

“Perhaps,” according to WSJ editorial writers, “it is changing demographics led by the millennial socialists scarred by the Great Recession. Perhaps Trump’s conservative populism (if that label, populism, is accurate) has inspired its counterpart on the left.

“Whatever the cause, this Bernie Sanders’ issue list triumph is the single most important development in the 2020 campaign. Trump should be grateful. If this is the opposition agenda next year, he might win a second term.”

He also will benefit from what WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan says is the reality in America that “elites in politics, media and the academy have grown oblivious to ‘the average Joe’s intense disgust’ at being morally instructed and ‘preached to.’

“Every day, Americans are told of the endless ways they are falling short. If we don’t show the ‘proper’ level of understanding according to a talking head, then we are surely racist. If we don’t embrace every sanitized PC talking point, then we must be heartless. If we have the audacity to speak our mind, then we are most definitely a bigot. These accusations are relentless.

“We are jabbed like a boxer with no gloves on to defend us. And we are fed up. We are tired of being told we aren’t good enough.”

To my friends, Noonan and WSJ editorial writers, I say this: We need someone in this country – R, D, or independent – who will lead us to the center and then operate from there.  Not the extremes of the left or the right.

For me, the center is a good place to be in politics these days, but I the center is growing smaller and shallower every day.

And the smaller and shallower it goes, the more Trump, the buffoon, benefits.