The 2020 Democratic presidential primary is already shaping up to be a glorified long jump contest to see who can lunge furthest left. With progressives uncompromisingly demanding a candidate who meets their exacting purity standards, early hopefuls are discovering that they must first renounce unacceptable portions of their past before they will be allowed to leap into the radical arms of the Dem grassroots base.
Sorry Situation
Newly announced candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is already performing her version of this primitive leftist atonement ritual. Gillibrand has hit the TV news circuit to issue effusive apologies for once having the temerity to believe that supporting the enforcement of United States immigration laws was a fit position for a Democratic member of Congress to hold. Gillibrand was elected to the House in 2006, and during her one term there, she opposed granting amnesty to illegal aliens and voted to increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Time to bend the knee, Senator.
“I would tell voters, ‘look at my heart, see who I am,'” Gillibrand plaintively emoted on ABC’s This Week while disavowing her previous heretical views. “I believe I have the courage and the compassion and fearless determination to do what’s right.”
Asked about her previous stance on immigration and former opposition to amnesty, Kirsten Gillibrand says, "I would tell voters, 'look at my heart, see who I am.' I believe I have the courage and the compassion and fearless determination to do what's right" https://t.co/kljcbS9MBX pic.twitter.com/FJbm1EQmUO
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 20, 2019
The candidate struck a similarly sensitive tone in her comments to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “They certainly were not empathetic and they were not kind and I did not think about suffering in other people’s lives,” she said of her discarded positions.
Gillibrand had the nerve to tell Tapper that President Trump lacked “integrity” even as she was blatantly resorting to mushy emotional babble to provide cover for her obvious flip-flop on border security. More telling, though, is what Gillibrand’s feverish efforts to distance herself from her House record say about Democratic orthodoxy. Backing U.S. immigration law is not merely an untenable position for a modern Dem to hold. It is considered to be beyond the pale of socially acceptable discourse. Refusing to endorse sanctuary states for illegal aliens makes for a “disqualifying moment,” as a Democratic Mitt Romney-esque scold might say. Thus the need for Gillibrand to so earnestly plead for forgiveness. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]…centuries-old Christian views on marriage are monumentally offensive to today’s Dems…[/perfectpullquote]
In a February 2018 interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Gillibrand added an extra touch, blaming her white constituents for the “racist” views on immigration that she is now so furiously running away from. “I came from a district that was 98% white,” she told CBS. “We have immigrants, but not a lot of immigrants. And I hadn’t really spent the time to hear those kind of stories about what’s it like to worry that your dad could be taken away at any moment, what it’s like….”
Look for her to continue to follow this tack as the primary race heats up. Whiteness is a liability for Democratic presidential candidates. An opportunist like Gillibrand knows that if there is one form of apology that progressives most dearly cherish, it is the “white privilege” mea culpa.
Cowering Candidate
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) meanwhile revealed that it isn’t just border security that is anathema in the Democratic cult. Traditional views on marriage formed by a Christian upbringing are an especially egregious sin that must be repented in the most verbally self-flagellating of ways.
Gabbard on Jan. 17 posted a video apologizing for ever associating with the socially conservative Catholic father who raised her in his campaign against homosexual marriage many years ago while she was still a teen.
“In my past I said and believed things that were wrong,” Gabbard kicked off her creepily servile video by saying. “And worse they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones. Many years ago I apologized for my words and, more importantly, for the negative impact that they had. I sincerely repeat my apology today. I’m deeply sorry for having said that.”
Tulsi Gabbard
Again, what is so startling here is the clear statement being made that centuries-old Christian views on marriage are monumentally offensive to today’s Dems and will not be tolerated in the slightest. Gabbard isn’t even trying to reach a middle ground here. She offers total submission to a prevailing progressive dogma while assuming the meekest posture she can conjure.
Ambitious Democratic presidential candidates may see these demeaning apology theatrics as a necessary tool in capturing primary votes, but they and the radicals they are courting are missing the bigger picture by a mile.
Two things need to be pointed out: Projecting weakness is not the best character trait to display for any candidate who later hopes to take on Donald Trump in a general election. And telling the American people that believing in U.S. immigration laws and traditional marriage are grave examples of wrongthink that must be cleansed from their hearts and minds is no way to attract voters who don’t already reside in the suffocating progressive shoebox that by all appearances is going to dominate the primary chase.
