This is Victor Davis Hanson saying much of what I think myself: Trump Compared with What? Or to be more direct, we should feel the blessings of seeing the most unlikely presidential victor in American history. How much worse things might have been is easy to recognise, except all too few seem to be able to. Ann Coulter has gone seriously mad, but if it is really true that some massive percent of those who voted for him in 2016 would abandon him if he cannot get the Wall constructed, seems to me borderline insane. Trump with or without the wall is fantastically better than anyone else I can think of, and no one else will build the wall either. But he might, and he certainly wants to.

This is now where the Democrats are heading which is the alternative government of the US. No one in 1969 could have imagined America as it now is, so anything is possible fifty years from now. These are just wisps of an indication where the middle of the road is now heading, which is what Trump is advised to lay out in his State of the Union. And these are the known knowns.

Trump should deviate from state-of-the-union custom and also point out that we are at a national intersection, in which the Democrats are offering a vision of America that is arguably the most socialist and radical since 1972 — if not ever.

The Green New Deal would essentially ban internal-combustion engines ten years after passing of the bill, and in effect destroy the current U.S. oil and natural-gas renaissance that has empowered the middle class with inexpensive fuel, provided millions of jobs, and ended our strategic reliance on the Persian Gulf.

The emerging new Democratic position on abortion is not just third-trimester abortions, but in theory infanticide upon dilation or delivery. At a time of near Medicare insolvency, many Democrats would expand it for all and thus for nobody, virtually ending private insurance.

Student debt would be abolished and college free — without discussion of where the trillions of dollars needed would come from in a nation running nearly a $1 trillion annual deficit and approaching $22 trillion in aggregate debt.

Anti-Israel and pro-Chavista Venezuela are the de facto New Democratic positions, as well as a new iteration of left-wing anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. As far as the border goes, the agenda is clear: Abolish ICE, issue blanket amnesties, expand sanctuary cities, and allow “refugees” to enter without documentation.

In sum, Trump should review the stark alternatives ahead — reminding the American people that the Democratic party is abandoning many of its old principles and becoming unrecognizable: Centrists are replaced by liberals who are overwhelmed by progressives who are now themselves being absorbed by neo-socialists.

The nub of the issue is this: in a “negotiation” to get Congressional funding for the wall, there is nothing the president has that the Democrats want, other than his resignation. It is not a lack of will to get the wall funded, it is a lack of cards to play in the negotiation. He thought there might be something in some kind of exchange over DACA, but the Democrats think eventually they will get everything they want so there was no reason for them to parley.

If it is the popular will of the majority of Americans that it maintains an open border with Mexico, so that anyone who wishes can come and camp and settle in the United States, then that is what will ultimately prevail. A madness on stilts.

Lots of critics around this morning, but not a single practical solution. It is only a three-week lull in the shutdown, but how things will be different three weeks who can say. The President says he has “a very powerful alternative” but that we shall see.