Kamala Harris Welcomes You To The Sausage-Making Of Big Tent Politics
Harris is trying to save democracy with a big tent from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney: she will not be your soul mate.
To be bluntly political, the public perception that Kamala Harris’s agenda is vague is a strength to her campaign and candidacy.
She is leading an anti-authoritarian big tent coalition that, literally unimaginably, includes lifelong Republicans like the staff of The Bulwark, Dick and Liz Cheney, Joe Walsh, a bunch of former GOP party chairs, and the former Republican incumbent president’s own former chiefs-of-staff. It would be irresponsible, in this race against a clear and present fascist danger, to begin campaigning for an extremely liberal agenda that will scare this vital Never Trump conservative voting bloc out of the 2024 Democratic Party.
It can be maturely forgiven as well that she has taken her time settling on policy positions. Joe Biden was scalpeled off the ticket so fast that it’s a little foolish and frankly unprofessional to expect her to just immediately rush out a series of agenda promises without calibrating their many analytical, electoral, personnel, and personal considerations.
She’s currently the vice president for an administration that is not hers, so she must be delicate within that aspect of her campaign, and she did not get the usual benefit of an exploratory presidential committee transitioning into a national organization developing over two or more years. Three months is not a lot of time to set in stone what one’s presidential priorities will be. Welcome to the sausage-making of real-time politics, kids.
I think it’s a testament to the future seriousness she will bring to decision-making as America’s Chief Executive that she didn’t do what Trump does: expectorate promiscuously, and impulsively say anything to anyone without any concern for consequences, ramifications, consistency, or logic.
To adapt the Biden line, we’re not comparing Harris to the presidential amalgam of Washington, Lincoln, and both Roosevelts all combined, we’re comparing her to her binary election opponent Donald Trump, who is a whiny little bitch, fascist wannabe mob boss who doesn’t know anything, doesn’t read or look anything up, doesn’t appreciate America’s national or public interests outside of their capability of enriching or aggrandizing him, and who is visibly getting more and more senile as we watch him skip debates, cancel mainstream news interviews, and just keep word-vomiting Nazi thoughts.
It’s also relevant to note the Democratic Party is a real political party, and Kamala Harris, a former senator, will work within the typical norms-based parameters of government and the party apparatus. The Democratic Party has a platform, and a bunch of legislators with their own personal ambitions and egos who aren’t terrified of Kamala Harris tweeting mean things about them.
The Republican Party is not a real political party anymore, and has become a neo-monarchist aristocracy of brown-nosing Mar-a-Lago hangers-on terrified always that King Trump might excommunicate them from the gullibly griftable MAGA cult if they’re not in his good graces. The GOP no longer crafts platforms, and is invariably terrified of a Trump tweet. The Republican Party is like one of Trump’s assault victims he has bullied into silence with threats of violence and non-disclosure agreements.
And because Trump has no party accountability, he gets away with having no knowledge of or appreciation for America’s institutional norms while roleplaying the Third Reich by promising wildly to deport 10–21 million brown people, use the military against citizens, blackmail every corporation, abuse the powers and expenses of the presidency to endlessly grift, and fire his way to a military as “loyal” as Hitler’s. And he’s really upset our institutions, and the law didn’t let him do it the first time and took away his toy of the presidency. Now he’s so obsessed with vengeance and motivated to stay out of prison for his federal crimes that he can’t help but keep referencing the Nazis, like at his Madison Square Garden Nazi rally redux.
Trump’s lizard-brain attraction to fascism is why an unprecedented number of Republicans are voting for Democrats for the first time in their lives, and Kamala Harris is focused on not scaring them off with a rushed liberal checklist of agenda promises. Kamala Harris deserves the benefit of the doubt that she’ll have a thoughtful agenda.
Not only is she a normal Democratic politician who understands how Congress and the government works, she’s already listening to and interacting with a lot of Republicans in her blitz campaign. She has always been more centrist than most other Democratic presidential candidates and senators, and her campaign now is far to the right of her 2020 campaign in which it was politically necessary to try and win over Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren voters (the sausage-machine of politics says hi!).
Also, Republicans are likely to flip the Senate even if Democrats far outperform polling in their expecting flipping of the House of Representatives. A divided Congress will be a giant check on Harris’s agenda, and the Republican Senate Majority Leader who replaces Mitch McConnell will be a whole lot more MAGA. Extreme conservatives can rest assured in their patriotic vote for Kamala Harris that she will not be able to turn the US communist.
She’s also inheriting a very capable and competent Biden Administration that has been legislatively competent and deft at keeping America’s global partnerships together. Trump getting into office would be like a giant meteor strike’s mass extinction event for the government as Project 2025's agenda is to fire everyone they can and install a “spoils” system of sycophants.
So I’m glad Kamala Harris isn’t needlessly demoralizing her liberal base and scaring off her Never Trump Republican base by dying on the hill over policy positions that have no chance to become law if the fascist wins and fills the bureaucracy with incel brown shirts inspired by American Nosferatu Stephen Miller and American Rasputin Steve Bannon. Harris will inevitably sign off on some policies I disagree with if she’s elected president, but, no matter where you are between Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney on the political spectrum, Harris is the play for 2024.
Anti-fascist, big tent coalitions are a responsibility of patriotic citizens of democracies when the public interest is threatened by hysterical demagogue cults of fascism. 🥃
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