The question of what motivates Democrats and what their values are has bedeviled me for years, since I have friends and family who are Democrats. If the government was not so big and controlling it would be less of an issue, but I find decisions I would make overruled by Democrats in power. My family and I end up paying for their mistakes on top of our own. We work hard, save as much as we can, invest in the future, and find out we have the ever-grasping government as partners who can render our efforts useless. Regulations and the overseers who impose them on us add to my misery, as do tax forms that are needlessly complicated and filled with loopholes that the rich can afford to exploit. I find the fruits of our labor are harvested and enjoyed by others.

They elected Obama -- twice! And will nominate Hillary Clinton. But that is just a smidgen (as Barack Obama might say) of what is wrong with Democrats.

I see the Constitution trampled to advance agendas I do not share. Free speech is all too often rejected as “hate speech” while watchers for “trigger words” are all too ready to censor the speech of others.

I see unions corrupt politics and teachers’ unions protect their interests and the future of their pensions over protecting the future of our children we place in their care. The work ethic is being eviscerated. People who build things are derided by President Obama as having not built things or dismissed as “lottery winners.” Doctors do not heal, they are greedy people who yank out tonsils and lop off legs solely for profit -- or so says the Democrats’ leader, Barack Obama, and the Democrats who cheer him. People who work in finance are “fat cats” and “one- percenters” who must be “toppled” -- or so sayeth the one percent of one percenter, Hillary Clinton, probably the most hypocritical person in America. Why do Democrats worship her?

So I have come to just throw my hands in the air and ask, “What is wrong with Democrats?” Let’s begin the inquiry.

Why do Democrats embrace Al Sharpton, an anti-white anti-Semite, liar, con man hustler who extorts millions from corporations and who is a habitual tax cheat? He has received a lot of attention lately, not because of his carnivalesque talk show on MSNBC that few watch, but because Barack Obama has appointed and anointed him as his point man on race. The riots in Ferguson and Baltimore and the tragic death of Eric Garner are fuel for Al Sharpton (he may not need much food in the wake of his bariatric surgery but he needs riots and mayhem -- and when they aren’t there, he creates them). But he has been welcomed by Democrats for many years. Heather MacDonald wrote about the Democratic Embrace of Al Sharpton last year after his birthday was celebrated by, among others, the leading luminaries of the Democratic Party:

The Democratic establishment is just as obsequious. It turned out in force earlier this month to celebrate Mr. Sharpton’s 60th birthday party at New York’s tony Four Seasons restaurant. Hillary Clinton phoned in with best wishes. Barack and Michelle Obama sent a congratulatory letter. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gushed: “He’s the nation’s Rev. Sharpton—and the nation is better for it.” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Reps. Charles Rangel and Jerry Nadler rushed to pay their respects. (snip) For those who have forgotten or are too young to recall, here is a brief history of the man now so warmly embraced by the mayor, the governor and the president. There was Mr. Sharpton’s frenzied involvement in the Tawana Brawley case. In 1987 Ms. Brawley, a 15-year-old African-American, concocted a tale of being raped by six white males. The allegation was ultimately revealed as a hoax, but not before Mr. Sharpton had commandeered the racially incendiary story and poured fuel on it by accusing a white county prosecutor of having been among the attackers. The prosecutor, Steven Pagones, won a defamation suit in 1998 against Mr. Sharpton, Ms. Brawley and her lawyers. Mr. Sharpton refused to pay the judgment against him, which was eventually discharged by a group of supporters. In 1991 a Hasidic driver in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights accidentally ran onto a sidewalk and killed a 7-year-old black child named Gavin Cato. Mr. Sharpton led protesters in angry cries of “No justice, no peace,” criticized Jewish diamond merchants in the neighborhood for selling goods from apartheid South Africa, and spoke at a rally where a banner said, “Hitler did not do the job.” During three days of violence following the accident, rioters beat to death an Australian rabbinical student named Yankel Rosenbaum. In 1995 Mr. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem to stop a Jewish landlord—a “white interloper,” in Mr. Sharpton’s words—from evicting a black-operated record shop. One of the protesters would later set fire to the store, killing seven store employees. Mr. Sharpton has never apologized for his involvement in the Brawley hoax. Nor has he taken responsibility for his agitation in Crown Heights. In 2008 the Associated Press reported that Mr. Sharpton and his business entities owed nearly $1.5 million in taxes and penalties, as well as tens of thousands of dollars in fines for unpaid workers' compensation and unemployment insurance. By this year Mr. Sharpton’s tax liabilities had ballooned to $4.7 million.

This is a man welcomed at State Dinners at the White House and who receives hugs and well-wishes from Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama has run roughshod over the Constitution and the separation of powers. Have Democrats in Congress who excoriated Richard Nixon for running an imperial presidency (he was a piker compared to Barack Obama) objected to the many examples of Obama violating important principles enshrined in our Constitution? This should not be a partisan issue and is not in doubt. He routinely loses in federal court -- except for Obamacare (that may be remedied somewhat by the Supreme Court in June on the topic of the availability of subsidies). Barack Obama routinely flunks the constitutional test and has racked up quite the losing score when it comes to federal courts who actually believe in the importance of upholding the law (most recently in checking, at least temporarily, his executive order regarding immigration).

Have any Democrats registered any objections to his presidential overreach? Senators and representatives take an oath, as did President Obama, to defend and support the Constitution. They have not. In fact, they have done everything they can to promote the powers of the President since they assume Democrats have a lock on the presidency. They are Democrats for a Dictatorial Presidency, as I wrote a few months ago.

People blame the IRS scandal on Lois Lerner. She is just a fall gal. Many Democrats, including powerful U.S. Senators and the president are to blame for siccing the IRS on political opponents. Kimberly Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the timeline of the scandal:

Ms. Lerner's focus on shutting down Crossroads GPS came only after Obama adviser David Axelrod listed Crossroads among "front groups for foreign-controlled companies"; only after Senate Democrats Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, Chuck Schumer and others demanded the IRS investigate Crossroads; only after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a website to "expose donors" of Crossroads; and only after Obama's campaign lawyer, Bob Bauer, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about Crossroads.

Democrats pushed the IRS to target Republicans; Richard Nixon was excoriated and faced impeachment for far less when it came to trying to use the IRS against a few political opponents -- and his critics included many Republicans. Have any Democrats objected to the use of the IRS for doing the “wet work” of the Democratic Party?

What is wrong with Democrats?

Of course, weaponizing the IRS is just part of a broader attempt to restrict the free speech of conservatives and Republicans. Barack Obama, as part of his broad assault on Fox News and conservative media, has called for a “change in how the media reports” the news.

Hillary Clinton is seemingly a foe of the First Amendment when it comes to political opponents. She and fellow Democrats hate the Supreme Court’s 2009 Citizens United decision that upheld the right of free speech in politics. This decision was based on a film that criticized her. So Hillary has called for a constitutional amendment to prohibit such speech. As Investors Business Daily wrote in” Hillary’s Call to Change First Amendment’s Free Speech”:

How is Hillary Clinton appealing to an ever-more-radical Democratic base? By talking up changing the First Amendment. What better way, after all, to end the political power of anti-Big Government forces? 'We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment."

Have Democrats objected to her attack on the First Amendment? Liberals are supposed to be open to debate and animated by the exchange of ideas. But they seem more focused on the “Shut up, they explained” mode of discourse as I wrote last year and are supporting a candidate who would gut the right of free speech.

What is wrong with Democrats?

Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have been mired in scandals lately (well, correct that, for many years), but the recent crop of scandals include the Benghazi disaster, pay for play actions at the Potemkin-like charity (really a political operation masquerading as a charity), the home-brewed server and email lies and tall tales exposure -- and more to come, no doubt. The Clintons have a long record pockmarked with corruption and other scandals, yet she has remained popular as ever among Democrats.

The Wall Street Journal’s Janet Hook noted something disturbing:

Hillary Clinton’s stature has been battered after more than a month of controversy over her fundraising and email practices, but support for her among Democrats remains strong and unshaken, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. In just seven weeks, a period in which Mrs. Clinton formally began her presidential campaign, the share of people with a negative view of her jumped to 42% from 36% in last month’s survey, and only a quarter of registered voters said they viewed her as honest and straightforward, down from 38% last summer. But she remains highly regarded among Democrats, with 76% saying they viewed her favorably

What is wrong with Democrats? Paul Begala, a Democratic pundit who has become a one-percenter by mocking Republicans in front of applauding Democratic crowds, may be right. He said “voters do not give even a fart” about Clinton’s email scandals. He is only partly right; voters do care, but seemingly not Democratic ones.

Hillary Clinton had the temerity to call for “religious beliefs to be changed” to accommodate abortion. Do Democrats care? Do they care when Barack Obama denigrates Christian history, as he repeatedly does? What is wrong with Democrats?

Despite the federal courts checking of Obama’s executive action regarding illegal immigrants, Hillary Clinton declared Obama did not go far enough when he gave millions of illegal immigrants de facto amnesty (reminder: Obama himself had said before he did not have the legal power to do so -- a rare instance of his knowing and respecting the law, but it was a fleeting instant). Do any Democrats have a problem with Hillary Clinton stating that Obama’s lawbreaking did not go far enough?

But then again, most Democrats think illegal immigrants should have a right to vote.

What is wrong with Democrats?

The Democratic Party and its base are lurching to the left, led by its leadership. There may be a silver lining, however. Democrats do not believe in compromise and view Bill Clinton’s triangulation as traitorous (it was all so twentieth century, after all). They have become a party of True Believers.

They may have pulled too far to the left, Peter Wehner writes. The rest of the country does not share their ideology and does not support their agenda. As Sean Trende and David Byler wrote recently, the GOP is as strong as it’s been in decades. Yes there are problems in the Republican Party but they are dwarfed by the problems many have with the Democratic Party. This was shown in the red tide that swept Democrats out of power throughout the nation last year, an event I celebrated in “Thank you, Mr. President.”

So perhaps what is wrong with Democrats is what is right with the rest of Americans.