Biden Who? Luckily Kamala Was So There.

For those keeping score in the Dem debates, it is 100 points for Slytherin at this point.

Biden, who knew? Biden, hiding in open sight for eight years inside the Obama White House, turns out to be some evil bastard segregationist out to make black people feel bad today about stuff from 40 years ago. Barack must have facepalmed last night learning this was going on right under his nose. I bet Michelle was shouting “Told you so!” from the kitchen. Poor Joe, never even saw the pitch that hit him in 2019. It ain’t yer time, kid.

Luckily Kamala was there. She explained growing up in suburban California, then moving to Canada for high school, with a Jamaican dad and an Indian subcontinental mom, both with PhD’s from Stanford, and later herself marrying a white Jewish entertainment lawyer after she graduated from the University of California law school, was basically the equivalent of the Middle Passage.

Here in the People’s Republic of New York City, Harris’ self-pity was met with huzzahs to rename Central Park after her. I’m sure the same in most of California.

Kamala Harris (along with Warren, Sanders, and others) want to eliminate employer-based health insurance, something over 70% of Americans who have such insurance are satisfied with. Only 13% of Americans prefer a system with no private plans. Are the Dems going forward with a 13% policy idea?

All Dem candidates are also dang sure the economy is a mess and Trump is the cause. Yet a CNN poll shows 71% of Americans say that the economy is very or somewhat good. And that was on the smart night. The earlier Democratic debate featured talk about publically-funded abortions for pregnant trans men, which makes very little sense even if you support, serially, trans people, abortion, public funding for medical care, and hell, pregnancy. Each question about race or gender was answered as if the whole thing was being run past HR first. Meanwhile, as Harris made 1970s discussions of school busing the centerpiece of her campaign the other candidates happily promoted open borders and free healthcare for illegal immigrants, apparently in the misguided notion illegal immigrants are the largest Democratic voting block left. About all that was left was for each candidate to virtually award AOC a year of their lives so she’d be old enough to run unopposed for the presidency.

All great moves if you are running for President of Twitter. But as someone in the Dem party must be vaguely aware, swing voters in a handful of states are likely to decide the 2020 election. If such a person exists in the party, they really need to ask which part of the assassination of Biden, and Harris exaggerating her personal suffering to proclaim herself America’s Official POC, will get them any of those votes so, so necessary to beat Trump.

One other thing which stood out is the contrast between Obama and his wanna-be successors. Obama always at least spoke inclusively; he never threw away any voters by criticizing them, making them feel wrong, or guilting them. He wanted all of America, or at least its votes if you want to be fully cynical.

Hillary started reversing that, most notably with her infamous comment Trump supporters were deplorables. She would see them in hell, unemployed and choking on the smoke from their coal fires. The current crop of Dems is all in with that. To a person they projected the idea that supporting Trump meant you were a white supremacist misogynist racist nazi who they would seek to throw aside in the name of progressivism. You’re all on the wrong side of history because you live in a red state, own a gun, or voted Republican. The fuck you extends to an attempt to defranchise many with feints toward ending the Electoral College. Who needs South Dakota after that? Better to reroute the tax dollars to progressive enclaves anyway.

What’s different is the attack on the people themselves, who they are. It is the very nature of politics to spar over ideas and positions. But what Dems have devolved into is attacking people because they hold certain beliefs. You may support a Republican tax policy and that doesn’t just make you wrong on economics, it makes you a racist white supremacist. The ultimate expression of this comes with support for the Second Amendment; you don’t just disagree on how to regulate arms, you have blood on your hands over Parkland, you child killing bastard. It is a good way to organize a mob, and a terrible way to treat fellow Americans, and really poor way to expand your voting base.

Harris in particular made many white Americans feel on trial for views they held in the past on things like busing (and her autobio version of events was far from true.) Joe Biden stood in for every purple voter who may have felt one way then, and another way now, but realizes in 2019 they are being teed up as the enemy. Offering redemption and acknowledging growth is not on the menu for these Democratic candidates. A purple voter may legitimately wonder how they might be treated under a Harris administration. Is it payback time? It seems a very short-sighted strategy for a candidate, an even worse one for a leader.

Also, Bernie and Beto who? Jeez, that was easy.