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Could this be progress? After years of denial and anger, have Democrats moved into the bargaining stage of their grief over 2016, placing their hopes into an old, white, male billionaire trying to buy their election? “Mike Bloomberg and his billions are what Democrats need to beat Trump,” they told themselves.

Bloomberg would be their “Get Out of 2016 Free Card” – though it will cost him. But like every silver bullet or magic wand the Democrats have tried to make the results of 2016 disappear, Bloomberg’s first audition in front of voters went up in flames. This happens to Democrats and the media establishment, a lot. You would think after near weekly reminders, like Michael Avenatti’s conviction on all counts of extortion, they would learn.

Wednesday night’s debate made no mention of the Democrats’ failed hyper-partisan impeachment push. There was no hysteria over Russia, no mention of “collusion,” Bob Mueller, or Ukraine. And what were the Democrats left with? A 78-year-old socialist millionaire front-runner who left the debate stage unscathed. A 78-year-old nanny-state billionaire who did not. Bickering over how quickly they should eliminate the private care of 217 million Americans. Whether to ban natural gas production or just place a moratorium on over 35 percent of our electricity generation. Should billionaires even be allowed to “exist,” they pondered, as the audience jeered attacks on communism. Few dared to clap for the free market, when a so-called moderate couched her position as, “I believe in capitalism, but…”

When they weren’t bashing each other, they bashed the economy. Joe Biden claimed the economy is not as great as you think, “no matter what people say.” Does that include Barack Obama, who this week tried to take credit for the Trump economic boom?

Herein lies the problem. Democrats refuse to acknowledge how they got here in the first place. The Obama-Biden years of big government were a failure. Trillions in taxpayer-funded stimulus at the start of the administration, yet Biden told us there was “no possibility” the jobs were coming back. Five years after the “recovery” began, the economy was “far from healthy.” The New York Times reported the “single best gauge” for recovery was wages, which weren’t rising “by even a penny.” When it was all said and done, 14.6 million Americans had dropped out of the labor force, including large numbers of women, minorities, and veterans.

Decline is a choice and Democrats chose it. By the end of eight years, the man who came in on "hope and change" made his closing pitch on economic pessimism. In June 2016 Obama told us what we can't do. Some manufacturing jobs are "just not going to come back." You can't negotiate better deals for American workers, he scoffed. “What magic wand do you have?”

Half a million new manufacturing jobs and two blockbuster trade deals later, President Trump is proving the real magic is keeping your promises, and unleashing the American spirit of resiliency and optimism.

Democrats, on the other hand, have been endlessly pursuing an easy way out of 2016. They never stopped to notice a socialist went about and “transformed” their party. The party is openly standing for open borders, taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens, banning fossil fuels, and hiking taxes on the Middle Class. But nominating Bernie Sanders, if the establishment lets them, will complete the cycle of grief for Democrats from 2016. Depression from a landslide defeat, and long-awaited acceptance and reckoning for their own failures.