Just when you thought national politics couldn’t get any worse, it does.

The Democrat debates are a series of desperate candidates trying to outdo each other in making promises that they can’t keep. They are overtly trying to buy votes and the sad fact is – it might just work.

One Democrat wants the federal government to pay “gay reparations.”

What?

That’s right. They feel an injustice was done to all those homosexuals for 243 years who couldn’t legally get a marriage license. The only way to correct this “wrong” is by giving homosexuals buckets of cash.

This is a real proposal. I could use some extra cash but I am not going to pretend to be a homosexual to get a reparation check from a Democrat president.

Of course, another more likely Democrat idea is to pay black people reparations for slavery.

I don’t know about you, but I never owned any slaves. My parents never owned slaves and my grandparents never owned slaves.

History shows that most of the slaves captured and sold in Africa were taken by other black people. Should some black families pay reparations for those ancestors? And if whites must pay reparations to the descendants of black slaves, shouldn’t everyone have to pay reparations to Native Americans? After all, we took their land.

Another wacky idea with unintended consequences is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

First, this is wrong because the government should not set salaries. Secondly, most minimum-wage jobs are entry level and they are held by people who aren’t the main breadwinner in the household. Thirdly, if a small business has 15 employees being paid $10 an hour and the minimum wage is $15 an hour, you have to lay off five employees to keep your payroll steady and not increase costs to your customers.

Obama produced Obamacare with no Republican support. His goal was single-payer health care, with every American paying taxes for “free health care” for everyone (including illegal aliens).

Now, Democrats want free health but they won’t explain how to pay for that. The price tag would be enormous and 180,000,000 Americans would lose their coverage with private companies.

Some Democrats are pushing “Medicare for everyone.” I’m 65 and I am signed up for Medicare. For 50 years, I had money subtracted from my paycheck to pay for Medicare. I earned it. I deserve it. No one should get that for free without paying something.

Another Democrat wants to forgive all college student loans. It’s in the trillions. The student loans used to be held by banks but now they are with the federal government.

This is a real problem but the solution is to lower the cost of college and teach fiscal responsibility. Liberal universities are charging $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 a year for degrees that only earn graduates a fraction of that accumulated debt.

But it’s not fair to forgive these debts. What about the students who borrowed the money and worked hard for years to pay it back? The workers of America would be paying for the financial irresponsibility of these students.

Another plan is to make all state-supported colleges have free tuition. Again, this would fall on the backs of taxpayers.

Here’s one of the absolute worst plans – free government subsidized childcare.

Children need their parents. A federal program for free childcare essentially tells the government to raise this young and impressionable toddlers.

But our culture preaches that moms must go back to work as soon as possible after having a baby. Then they ship the baby off to daycare centers when almost all of them would rather stay home with those precious babies.

Federal childcare would be an assault on the nuclear family. And if the federal government ran the childcare centers like they run the Veterans Administration, it would be a disservice to those kids.

Another Democrat presidential hopeful wants to subsidize rent for all poor people. This is called “socialism” and if you advocate for the government to provide food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, cell phones and more for everyone, then you are a certifiable “socialist.”

The field of Democrat presidential hopefuls has its share of extreme environmentalists. They used to not admit to wanting a “carbon tax” but now they are outspoken about it.

What is a carbon tax?

It basically levies a tax on how much energy you use or how much waste you produce. The more energy you use, the higher the tax. It is designed to put oil, natural gas and coal companies out of business and to transfer America’s wealth to other nations.

Here’s the bottom line: Democrats want to buy votes by raising taxes on middle-class Americans without using their own money. It’s a power grab.

You would think that because these proposals are so outrageous, they wouldn’t stand a chance of passage. That’s what we thought of Obamacare and it was a nightmare.

They say the Democrat nominee will move back to the middle after the primaries. The way it stands right now, they are so far left that any step can only be to the right.