And So Forth

From: The Fifth Period, VII: Observations Regarding the Election of 2024: Run Up and Aftermath

Now that Harris is to be ordained, speculation of who might have been a better candidate may be counterproductive. Suffice to say she was not on my short list, but I would vote for her head in a jar of blue liquid, to paraphrase Charlie Sykes, before I’d vote for Trump or support any third candidate that would divide opposition to his ascendency. It may however serve as a cautionary tale to point out that much of Trump’s popularity is fueled by reaction to progressive overreach in pursuing policies that are not broadly supported by the electorate. While Harris has of late and as a member of the current administration adopted positions more in line with moderate members of the party, she will be seen by many, based on her past statements, as the candidate from DEI. Her reembracement of her image as a tough on crime prosecutor, in order to repackage herself as a moderate, which she had gone to some lengths to distance herself from in the primary campaign of 2020, only reinforces her image with many as a wet finger in the wind.

The reaction of the progressive elements of the party, choosing to remember her more liberal stands, is to interpret her elevation, and the excitement of having an actual living candidate, as a mandate for progressive policy beyond that of more moderate elements of the party and of the general electorate including independents and gettable Republicans who tire of the orange monstrosity and the many who see Trump in existential terms, as an illiberal threat to our system of government and to our most fundamental values. While Harris seems to be opening a slight lead in opinion polls which well may widen, the path to electoral college victory remains advantage Republicans, Democrats remain unable to advance beyond a statistical tie with a sociopath. They would do well to reexamine doctrinaire assumptions or, if they intend to win, to tact toward moderation in the manner of Biden’s successful 2020 campaign. The idealists of both parties are represented by the shock troops of base motivation, but victory belongs to those who command the middle ground of American politics, to those who advocate good governance over doctrinaire solutions. Harris would address the concerns of moderate conservative party elements and the broader electorate by choosing a running mate firmly identified with moderate policies.

As the euphoria of the present feel good moment subsides, Harris will face charges  of liberal extremism from both Republicans and moderate independents. Harris comes by the nomination through party emphasis on continuity over prospects of new faces and fresh policies that might have been presented by an open convention. In many ways Harris represents the weakest, in terms of electability, of any of the prominently mentioned candidates for the nomination. As Andrew Sullivan puts it in his podcast The Weekly Dish of 07/26, The Camala Chimera:

But at some point, Harris is going to have to square what she has said and done in the past with what she proposes to do as president.

Her record on the national stage — from 2019 till now — is that of a super-woke leftist. In speech after speech, and in an ad she narrated just before the 2020 election, she insists on the need for “equity” as well as “equality,” and by “equity” she means that “everyone ends up in the same place.” She is a presidential candidate who endorses “equality of outcomes” over “equality of opportunity,” a position that even Communist China has now abandoned.

If politics may be seen, to invert a phrase, as the extension of war by other means, as a collective channeling of causal efficiencies, of power in the pursuit of societal ends, within the framework of civilly proscribed debate, policy positions must be tailored to the interest and aspirations of a majority of the polity, rather than to adherence to positions of idealistic purity. Often pursuit of power is thwarted by self-inflicted wounds: with Democrats virtue signaling often takes precedence over winning elections; by insistence on idealistic purity the battle may be lost or the victory prove pyretic. Progressives will see Harris as one of their own, will be driven by enthusiasm to overreach, and her to be drawn to and energized by that enthusiasm, while Republicans will paint her with the broad brush of socialistic and postmodern excess, as representative of threats to Western civilization, in contrast to Trump as the authoritarian messiah of traditional values.

If Democrats are to prevail they need check the inertia of their Marxist adjacent progressive wing. The moderate middle need reassert its dominance by addressing policies compatible with the interest of the middle class, with the ‘silent majority’ whose more measured voices are often drowned by the shrillness of the extremes, the latter of which are frequently mistaken for the voice of the party, and in fact are often seen to lead the party as if by the nose, but who are in the end to be cancelled at the polls by the great weight of the American middle.

If Democrats are to prevail in November—and I take it to be of existential importance that they do—they must define the cypher Harris by emphasizing her more conservative prosecutorial past that she has put so much effort in running away from in order to identify herself as a progressive. That stance—that of the cultural warrior under the overarching banner of ‘Social Justice’ is passing out of favor with the broad electorate in favor of a more quietist style of cultural engagement, even to a fallback position of more traditional values. One may see the MAGA phenomenon as symptomatic of the conflict between deeper tectonic forces, the eternal dynamic between emphasis of conservative and liberal values and the eruptions of popular expressions generated by those forces, the shifting zeitgeist of the times.

Concerns of the electorate over Harris’s past advocacy of progressive causes may be to some degree ameliorated by her choice of a running mate. That of a white male centrist would be recommended and seems largely accepted by the left as a necessary sop to those in fear of DEI directives, such seen as they are as reverse racist and gender identification threatening. Many, including many women, see extreme anti patriarchal sentiments as threatening to male identity formation necessary to males in order to fill traditional male functions and as forcing women into roles that may be beyond their natural proclivities or comfort zones. One reason for the disparity of women in male dominated professions may be that fewer women, and with notable exceptions, may aspire to professional careers or have the aggressive characteristics to pursue places in the ‘c’ suite. As of a species classified as one of the great apes, humans are marked by pronounced sexual dimorphism, whether in physical or behavioral characteristics. Prejudices in favor of males in traditional roles, especially those of political leadership are deep seated and not entirely a matter of cultural habit. While Harris is self-described as black, she may perhaps be more accurately described, as Obama, as of mixed race. The importance of her sex or color may be of less importance to many socially conservative black women than her stance on social issues or qualities of leadership.

Above all however, the choice of a running mate should first be of whom might best step into the role of president should that be required or to carry the banner further as her successor. When vice presidents are chosen primarily on the basis of their appeal to regional or factional elements of their coalitions, rather than on the basis of their qualifications for the office of the presidency, parties ignore the real possibility that the vice president may be required to assume the higher office or may stand in the hustings for electoral succession, and they miss their best opportunity to shape the political field for an additional eight years beyond the eight years of a two term president. When chosen on the basis of identity or sectional popularity, or because they constitute no threat of charismatic appeal to that of the president, vice presidents present a structural dilemma: as potential nominees for the succession they carry a presumption of entitlement while, if possessing the qualities of the office, only by coincidence, the latter not having been a primary concern in the process of their selection. Case in point being the selection of Biden’s running mate on the basis of appeal to defined interest groups, rather than primarily on the basis of perceived qualifications for the office of the presidency.