Sigmund Freud called the act of human beings ascribing their unconscious qualities to others as a means of self-defense, psychological projection or projection bias.
Is there a more apt diagnosis for how Maine’s liberal political class functions than Freud’s description?
For instance, we have Emily Cain, running for Congress on the platform that Bruce Poliquin is a Wall Street funded, special interest supported partisan player – this after she was revealed to have been at a fundraiser with dark money special interest groups run by an executive of Soros Fund Management, a Wall Street financial firm.
Cain’s proclamation that she is the bipartisan candidate in the race is also proven wrong when looking at her Sunlight Foundation ranking as the fifth most partisan Senator in a body of thirty-five.
On the issues, Cain often attacks Poliquin for issues relating to supporting working people, retirees, or the most vulnerable among us. Yet, during her time in Augusta, welfare for able-bodied adults exploded, the state pension system was nearly bankrupted, the tax burden on lower-income working Mainers grew and hundreds of our fellow Mainers who truly needed help languished on waiting lists.
Another classic Emily Cain example is how she defended some of the most corrupt actors in American finance by attacking Bruce Poliquin for demanding the Export-Import Bank clean up their act. Ms. Cain had a choice to make in that situation and she chose to stand and defend the wealthy and well-connected of American finance while attacking Bruce Poliquin as if it were he that was doing the bidding of the wealthy and well-connected.
However, Cain is not the only liberal who seems to be projecting their worst qualities onto others.
Recently, the Senate Democrats launched a series of digital ads accusing Republicans of things such as sending jobs overseas, or voting to raise property taxes.
In the former example, liberals are attacking others when in fact, it is their Presidential candidate who has a history of supporting trade deals (NAFTA and TPP) that have gutted Maine’s economy – in the latter example, regarding property taxes, they are running the ad in the Waterville Senate District where the liberal candidate served in local government while the spending now driving the property tax hike went unchecked for years, and the Republican is opposed to the tax hike, while the liberal they support is not.
We watch as liberals constantly attack moderates and conservatives on issues of helping the elderly and disabled, while the same liberals simultaneously push them to the back of the line to ensure more taxpayer funded benefits for young, able-bodied adults.
Even more stark is the unfounded attacks liberals launched in the wake of the DNC Wikileaks scandal, claiming the hack was due to some phantom alliance between Trump and the Russian government.
Largely ignored by the mainstream media were the documented accounts of Hillary Clinton’s approval of the sale of U.S. Uranium to Russia while her husband was collecting huge speaking fees from Russian interests. Even more damning, was the revelation that 17 of the 28 technology companies involved in the Skolkovo portion of the U.S./Russia “reset” engineered by Hillary Clinton were found to be Clinton Foundation donors, or the fact that Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta did not reveal he sat on the board of Joule Unlimited, which collected $35 million from a fund founded by none other than Vladimir Putin.
It used to be that Congresswoman Chellie Pingree was the standard-bearer for this type of projection bias here in Maine. Pingree attacked hedge fund-managers with private jets shortly before she was busted walking a red carpet from the private jet of a hedge fund manager. Never mind Pingree’s claims to support American workers and non-GMO food while her husband poured tens of millions into the Chinese coal and chemical industry and Evogene genetic engineering research in Israel.
Now, it seems, the Pingree method of falsely attacking others for doing what you yourself are doing has become commonplace in American, and Maine politics.