Defeated Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris studiously refused to make any concessions whatsoever to her party’s large left-wing progressive base, including on the important issue of genocide in Gaza. Now that Democrats are conducting their postmortems, the one thing they fail to acknowledge is that alienating your base voters and driving away 12 million of them wasn’t such a bright idea.
When We Fight Progressives, We Lose
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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The “drive ’em away” strategy is hardly new. A perusal of the New York Times, and any other number of left of center publications, reveals a regular omission of references to Generation X. Articles that talk of the boomers, the millennials, and Gen Z, will simply not even bring up Generation X, or, at best, mention it in passing. The left, much like the wife who knows her husband is molesting the kids, excels at looking the other way. I mean, imagine the loss of position if the allegations were confirmed!
That Donald Trump will, probably, be the last boomer president fills my heart with glee. One final spasm of orgiastic horribleness to perfectly capture the totality of the ethos of a generational cohort. Look at the three others: Bill Clinton, a philanderer who quite possibly raped multiple women (but we don’t talk about that; Hillary stood by her man, so should we); George W. Bush, a draft-dodging coke head who wiped out two companies in Texas while looking for oil (but he found Jesus and everyone wants to have a beer with the guy, even though, as a recovering alcoholic, he can’t); and Barack Obama, a smoothyguts conman who protected Wall Street first and foremost.
Donald Trump, the ne plus ultra of the boomer collective id, is the transporter beam merger of the three earlier Presidents Boomer: a rape-happy coward who drove multiple businesses into the red while looking out for the hyperwealthy.
Grab the popcorn. It ought to be a hell of a show. I wish Mr. Gaetz the best of luck as attorney general. Ed Meese, in hell, is looking on in frank admiration.
I wish Harris’s loss were a sign of the power of progressive ideas and progressives. However, half the people who voted for Biden but not for Harris did so because she was too pro-Israel and half because she was too pro-Palestine. Those who believe that they have punished her for being too pro-Palestine also think that they have flexed their muscles, and that the Democratic Party must be more like them.
I recall an interview in a Russian newspaper some ten or twelve years ago with a prominent liberal. In different parts of the interview, the liberal made the following points: 1) Putin is Hitler and 2) obviously Putin is preferable to “someone like Oksana Dmitrieva” (a mild patriotic social democrat whose main sin was apparently genuine interest in worker rights and welfare of the poor). But Russian liberals at least have the excuse that they have no chance of coming to power anyway, on account of firm and widespread public loathing. Democrats aren’t there yet, so similar attitudes on their part let them lose winnable elections.