What do you do as a voter when your party isn’t that into you? On today’s TMI Show, in which there’s no such thing as Too Much Information, Ted Rall and Scott Stantis (guest hosting for Manila Chan) Progressive and other left-leaning Democrats are once again wrestling with a dilemma they’ve seen before: Kamala Harris has pivoted to the right of her party, eschewing progressive policies, campaigning with far-right Liz Cheney and supporting Israel against Gaza, and Ukraine against Russia.
Should progressives support Harris despite her snubs, hoping she secretly plans to move left of she wins? Should they punish her by voting third party or even for Trump? Or should they abstain from voting?
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Ted (et alia):
I know the impulse is “Oh, if I vote for her, she’ll stop hitting me” but, “C’mon, cut the malarkey.” Kamala Harris is a naked opportunist, much like Hillary Clinton. She “evolves” — and never cleverly — in a desperate, Jan Brady-ish attempt to be more popular than Marcia by constantly changing. The horrible lesson? That’s what most of us do just to survive. We change our outward stances on things large and small because we HAVE TO keep our jobs. It’s a slave mentality. And one thing a slave knows? Another slave.
Harris isn’t pivoting. She isn’t shifting to the right or to the left or to the up or to the down. She doesn’t have a center. She just wants power. She wants to be in charge. She wants people scared of her. She wants people jumping to attention when she walks into the room. You don’t get that by flop sweat.
The really sad, funny thing? Trump’s followers give him that degree of respect and surrender as part of their craven, immature, unfinished, lumpen natures because he presents the facade of confidence and authority. He’s often wrong but never uncertain. Harris sounds trembly and about to puke in her lap even when she’s just ordering off a menu at the drive-thru. Hillary Clinton had the same problem. America, sadly, seems unable to generate a confident woman who can achieve a position at the highest levels of the political structure. Eleanor Roosevelt? Yes. Shirley Chisholm? Yes. And that’s about it. All the rest are these nervous, fumbling, imbecilic oafs who nervously and tentatively deliver committee-generated “opinions” that people can smell from a mile away are false.
I’ve been following the Harris camp responses. They are, in their own way, just as bad as the Trump side. Factual arguments are dismissed as coming from “plants.” Any criticism is dismissed as “trollery.” And so on.
The problem is, fear doesn’t work when you’re trying to pretend you’re taking the high road, like Harris’ owners are trying to position her. Trump’s side? It works great. Fear sells. Trump is selling a fearful version of a fear-filled country to a fear-filled voting bloc. Harris? She’s pretending to be high minded, but avoids anything that might upset her wealthy owners/operators. And the contradictions are so obvious her supporters are already suffering from “Norman, coordinate” (obligatory “Star Trek” reference) levels of logical conflict: You can’t say Joe Biden fixed the economy which Harris is now claiming needs her skillful guidance to fix, while half the country is living from paycheck to paycheck and has been for years (if not decades) while no one wants to take an honest look at the unemployment figures and Harris is on record as claiming that she wouldn’t change a single thing she did during the Biden presidency (which I guess has ended, even though he is, in some Dr. Jill Biden fantasy, still in charge).
The lefties should let Harris’ miscarriage of a campaign crash and burn like the Hindenberg or the opening credits of “The Six Million Dollar Man.” Then, they should find Al Franken and, with rusty knife blades pressed against his throat, tell him his 2028 campaign for president starts now. That simple. It would require two things to succeed: a complete abandonment of the worst aspects of “woke-ism” — no more 90% focus on an issue that affects 1% of the voting base — and a continuously active aggressive posture toward the dnc. (And by “aggressive” I mean, “Shut up, or we’ll come and kill your children in the night.”) Many people don’t get it, but the democratic party (at least the weak, semi-erect version personified by the corpse of Joe Biden and voiced by the quavering vocal cords of Kamala Harris) has “compromised” itself into senescence. It’s time for a whole new paradigm.
(And off to moderation. Ted, you’ve got to get that fixed, boychik.)