Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is the running mate for the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden. Half of the Democrats surveyed in a new Rasmussen poll believe Biden will fail to serve the full four years of his term if elected. What are we to make of these two revelations? A truly bizarre scenario is currently playing out in blue circles, and it makes one question the sanity as well as the basic competence of progressive political forces.
Choose For Me, Party Bosses
Stridently left-leaning Democratic voters were unable to find a candidate they liked during the long and interminable primary process that played out over most of 2019 and into the first months of 2020. So they decided to let an established party veteran select for them. If Harris is indeed widely expected to take over at some point during Biden’s tenure, then it appears Democratic voters, by flooding to him in March, in effect said to the longtime Delaware senator who served as Barack Obama’s former vice president, “here, you choose for us.”
In doing so, they had to understand that it wouldn’t be Biden’s call alone. They did realize that, didn’t they? Astonishingly, the DNC-Swamp-Uniparty ruling party establishment was gifted an opportunity to select the real Democratic presidential nominee by a markedly progressive grassroots voting base. It’s akin to the Tea Party asking Dick Cheney to tell them who to vote for circa the 2008 Republican primaries. It’s crazy.
There’s so much to unpack here. Progressive Democrats became convinced they could not win a general election with their brand of politics, so they flocked to the establishment candidate who came around late in the primary game. He would do the running, win, and then get out of the way.
As far as strategy goes, this is myopic, naïve, and just plain dumb. Biden had been leaking oil everywhere in first primary contests, and leftist Democrats were primed to send the cherished message to the party’s Old Guard that it would no longer be calling the shots. Instead, they rejuvenated the very people they had sworn to supplant for party supremacy when this process started.
They must have believed they could pressure D.C. lifer Biden into selecting a committed progressive who could sneak into the White House on his back. They got Harris instead, whose entire career is a testament to machine politics (see her mentor, Willie Brown, in California) and razor-sharp personal ambition over ideals.
Harris was an early casualty in the overcrowded Dem primary field, pulling out of the race on Dec. 3. While she blamed lagging fundraising, the truth of the matter is that Dem voters decisively rejected her before even a single ballot was cast. Harris’ harsh, autocratic demeanor – a direct result of her attempts to cultivate a “tough gal” persona – proved a total flop last fall. Briefly upgraded to “top-tier” status after not-so-subtly framing Biden as a racist over the antiquated issue of busing in the 1970s during a debate, she froze like a deer in the headlights atop that elevated pedestal, struggling to lay out a coherent policy platform. Her campaign rapidly melted away, leaving no real distinguishing marks behind to remind voters that she had once been there.
Fast-forward eight months, and now she is, in essence, slated to become president if Democrats capture the White House in November.
Party of Strange
It raises an interesting question: What was the point of that long slog known as the Democratic Party’s primary season? Abjectly mediocre figures like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Rep. Julian Castro (D-TX) bored the nation to tears for months while endlessly squabbling in circles over niche progressive issues such as climate change, systemic racism, open borders, and free health care and college education. Loftier voices, such as those of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), joined Biden in wholly acquiescing to this total leftist framing. Progressives were dominating the conversation. In the process, Harris was among the first to be found wanting. She was dismissed.
Then, when the votes started being counted, these same staunch leftists dutifully handed over the keys to the car they were so clearly driving to the DNC. And now the Old Guard has the person many suspected it preferred from the beginning as the actual party nominee, albeit tucked away in the number two spot. Progressives let this play out all in the name of allowing an aged, gaffe-prone Swamp stalwart with serious health issues clouding his candidacy “beat Trump” in November.
We are less than three months away from Election Day, and the Democratic Party continues to be the same muddled mess it showed itself to be when Harris and her fellow weak White House aspirants climbed that first debate stage in Miami in late June 2019. Throughout the quest to select a presidential ticket, Dems have been erratic, impulsive, and just plain weird. There seems to be no method to the madness.
For the second straight time, Democrats are throwing out a dull and unimaginative party establishment duo against a charismatic change agent. The truly amazing factor is not that progressives will swallow this tripe once again. It is that they are the ones who willingly – and completely unnecessarily – made it happen.
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