The Democrats' Box

 

John Fetterman, second from the right. Kamala Harris, third from the left.

The Democrats in the US are in a quandary. They fixed the nomination last time to give it to Joe Biden. This was already a desperate choice; they knew he was old and unsteady. An op ed at the time said “just stay alive until election day, Joe.” But Bernie Sanders was even older, and not even a Democrat: he was, officially, an Independent Socialist. He looked like he was about to take the nomination. Pete Buttigieg, the next possible option, was only the mayor of a small midwestern city. Michael Bloomberg, only recently a Republican, had fizzled with the voters, despite a huge cash outlay. And nobody else was in striking distance in the party’s primaries.

So the idea was to push Biden as at least a safe pair of hands, who would be a one-term president and then pass it off to the anointed. Kamala Harris was the one they really wanted, primarily on racial and gender grounds: a black woman. But she had fizzled in the campaign. Now they would have time to coach her and to build some buzz.

Three years later, things have not worked out for them. Harris has not jelled; she does not seem capable of it. Biden is obviously failing. 

Which puts them in a box. They can’t safely run Harris; and Biden is failing in the polls. Any other candidate amounts to a rejection of Harris, and charges of racism and sexism. Nor is there another plausible candidate of sufficient stature. People speak of Michelle Obama; but she has no real qualifications for the job, reputedly has no interest in it, and her popularity would probably nosedive as soon as she started taking positions on issues and being seen as a politician. 

The essential problem here is a lack of quality candidates on the left, both in 2020 and now. Two words: John Fetterman.

The Canadian Liberals face a similar problem. Justin Trudeau is now an albatross around their collective necks; but there is no plausible replacement waiting in the wings, as there always had been in the past: no Paul Martin, no Jean Chretien, no John Turner, not even a Michael Ignatieff. No figure of independent stature around whom there is some real buzz. Mark Carney, perhaps; but he seems a faceless bureaucrat. Trudeau himself, as leader, was something of a Hail Mary pass, obviously underqualified, and there is no one else behind him. 

Why there are no leaders available on the left?

Because they seem to suppress and force out those of any leadership potential: RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Jodi Wilson Raybould. In the wider culture, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Warren Kinsella, Stephen LeDrew. Which is to say, they cannot tolerate and force out anyone with principles and independent thoughts. This is what leadership is about, and what it requires.

This is the mark of a cult, which has some guilty secret to conceal. You cannot trust someone with principles who thinks independently; they are bound to see and mention it.

This is death to any human progress. It is death to any democracy.

Why do people still vote for the Democrats, or the Liberals, despite the lack of any real leadership?

Because they are complicit. The shared guilty secret turns them into NPCs, zombies. And they react violently to any independent thought.

The guilty secret: a foetus is a human life.

2024 Predictions

I think RFK Jr. is an exceptionally attractive candidate. The Earth is moving beneath us. 

The Democratic Party establishment is determined to go with Biden and Harris, who are notably unpopular. Voters have growing reason to believe Biden is not in control of his faculties. The are both low in the polls. But the hubris of the Democratic establishment knows no bounds.

RFK is likely to win the first primary, in New Hampshire. Against a sitting president. In most years, that would clinch it. 

I expect the Democratic Party establishment is likely instead to blatantly rig the nomination process to keep him out. They will prevent other candidates from jumping in, the same way they managed to get everyone to jump out in 2020. They think they can get away with it, because they have previously gotten away ith it, against Bernie Sanders and the far left.

But I think they will run out of luck. I see RFK putting together a run as an independent; and I think a lot of other Democrats will join him. Imagine a ticket of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard; almost a dream ticket in terms of charisma. Imagine Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin flocking to these new colours. Imagine vocal support from dissatisfied leftists like Jimmy Dore and Joe Rogan in the media. They could pull a lot of votes, I suspect, if well-funded. Not enough to win, but enough to be a big factor, and establish a new party that might survive and supplant the current Democrats over time.

They could run on a peace platform, against big pharma and big business, for environmentalism, and against the extremities of the trans movement and the culture war. As the religious left, and as a reset of the Democrats to what they stood for in the late Sixties; “Kennedy Democrats.”

On the Republican side such a split has already happened, in 2016, and the insurgents won. That was when Trump took control of the party for the populists against the establishment.

Mike Pence is now the standard-bearer of the old guard. But I can’t see him overtaking Trump in the polls, and I can’t see them splitting off, as they did in 2016 under McMullin. That would look too much like a dead end. They will suck it up and back Trump. Conceivably, a few might move to RFK; but I can’t see even a Mitt Romney feeling more comfortable there. Because he is purely establishment, and RFK is anti-establishment. 

How about Trump’s VP pick? Unless something changes dramatically, as it certainly can, everybody else looks as though they are running for vice-president. Nobody but DeSantis is within range of Trump.

 Many are hoping for a Trump-DeSantis ticket. I think it is possible, even if they are going at it hammer and tongs for now. It would not work with DeSantis at the top of the ticket; that would seem too much of a comedown for a former president. But if Trump comes out on top, he holds no grudges. DeSantis might, in ordinary circumstances, be too big a beast to be content with second-best, but since Trump is limited to a single term, he might go for it.

Chris Christie is reputedly about to enter the race. He surely has no reasonable chance at the top of the ticket. My guess is he is consciously running for the vice-presidency. He is hoping to raise his profile. Having more people in the race actually helps Trump; he might even be a plant. Christie is a good attack dog; he took down Marco Rubio in 2016. Presidents generally like Vice Presidents who are attack dogs. Trump certainly does. He wanted Newt Gingrich on the ticket in 2016, for this reason. He had to take Pence thanks to pressure from party stalwarts. This time, he will not have that pressure. Newt is a little long in the tooth; but Christie might fit the bill. He could prove himself in the primaries.

Also auditioning for the vp slot, and highly suitable: Tim Scott, Larry Elder, and Nikki Haley. They are hoping, no doubt, to become diversity hires.

The cards look good for a Trump win.

The Stupid Party

 

Zippy

Does anyone else remember Zippy the Pinhead? I can’t look at John Fetterman without being reminded of that cartoon character.

Not to mock Fetterman for his recent stroke; but even without it, he would look like Zippy the Pinhead; and the logic of his political positions would seem just as random. And even without the stroke, he would have a remarkably scanty resume for a senatorial candidate. Mayor of a small village; one term lieutenant governor. No significant business or professional experience.

Fetterman

So why did Fetterman, post-stroke, end up the Democratic Pennsylvania senatorial candidate? Can it really be that they had no one better or more visibly sane to put up for election? Apparently so.

The bigger question is why the Democratic Party in the US has such a weak bench. Last cycle, the best they could come up with for President was old Joe Biden, corrupt, a hack, and suffering from dementia. And all they could come up with for Vice President was Kamala Harris, who cannot seem to say anything coherent even with speechwriters. The closest competitor in the primaries seemed to be Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg also seems to be many Democrats’ best hope for 2024. And Buttigieg’s qualification is no more than that he was mayor of a small Midwestern city. Or perhaps they could have chosen Bernie Sanders, older than Biden, unknown before he ran for president, and a senator from a small state. In fact, the second smallest, and one in which even a yellow dog would be elected senator so long as he was a Democrat.

How can it be that, despite the fact that they represent roughly half the population of the US, 150 million odd people, this is the best the Democrats can come up with for leadership?

But it is not so hard to account for if you take into account the fact that half the US population is necessarily of average or below IQ. If they all or almost all vote for the same party, you will have the present Democratic situation: even the leaders will be people of roughly average IQ.  

So the problem of leadership reveals the problem with the Democrats, and the modern left. Their ideas are, as Margaret Thatcher said, simply wrong, and only stupid people buy them. Only stupid people think, for example, that when the government gives out money, it is a generous gift from those politicians, and not coming from their own taxpayer pockets.

Never mind the Republicans in the US. Witness as well the Canadian Liberal Party. The best they can come up with as leader is an impulsive and self-indulgent high school drama teacher. And the word on the Hill is that he is secure in his position, because they have nobody else who could plausibly replace him.

Intelligent people no longer become Democrats, leftists, or Liberals; unless they are on the take.

Unfortunately, unintelligent people rarely know, or accept, that they are unintelligent. Witness the Dunning-Kruger Effect: you need to be smart to know you are smart, but equally smart to know you are dumb. Lots of research shows that, if a gap in IQ exists of more than 15 points, one standard deviation, two minds become mutually unintelligible. The less intelligent will not be able to grasp where the more intelligent is coming from, and is likely to suspect they are crazy or evil. Perhaps a “far-right extremist.”

We are separating out into a smart party and a stupid party. And the stupid party is in power.

The Geriatric Party

Diane Feinstein in younger days.

 The Democrats, I hear, worry about whether Diane Feinstein, ranking Democratic member of the Senate Justice Committee, still has the mental acuity to handle the approval hearings for Trump’s pending Supreme Court nominee. Feinstein is 87. 

Why do senior Democrats all seem so old? Joe Biden, 77, is showing signs of senility. Ruth Bader Ginsberg hung on to her post until a few days ago at 87. Nancy Pelosi is 80; Bernie Sanders, 79. Michael Bloomberg, the other guy who looked possible for the nomination, 78.  Jerry Nadler, the Dem Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, a youthful 73, seemed to pass out at a recent press conference.

Granted, there is a prominent clique of younger leaders: Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez and her “squad,” Pete Buttigieg. But they are quite junior in terms of their elected positions and electoral career: their very prominence suggests a lack of leadership above them. A mayor of South Bend? A first-term congresswoman? A recently failed senatorial candidate? A recently failed gubernatorial candidate?

Is it because the Democratic Party is dying?

This does not sound right. After all, they control one of two houses of Congress, and the split is close in the Senate. They just elected a two-term president, and when they have lost the presidency, it has been cardiac-arrest close.

Perhaps their problem is identity politics. Jonathan Kay just wrote a piece about how that is causing problems for Canada’s NDP. The Democrats, like Canada’s leftist New Democrats, choose candidates not for leadership ability, but for “intersectionality.” Because of this, while candidates may continue to be elected at more or less all levels, few leaders emerge. You get time-servers in safe seats. Leaders need to be exceptional, people of rare talents; more or less by definition.

In the recent Democratic presidential sweeps, there were candidates holding higher elected positions than the squad and “Mayor Pete,” who were still below retirement age. Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Steve Bullock, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper. Most of them barely caused a ripple. They were simply not personally impressive; just suits. Most occupied safe seats. Andrew Cuomo: more or less inherited his job from his father. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris: in California, where Democrats usually win in runoffs against some other Democrat. And Newsom just replaced 82-year-old Jerry Brown.

The same disease of terminal mediocrity in the middle seems to have infected academics, for the same reason. When you do not hire and promote for merit, it stands to reason that the entire enterprise soon begins to suffer.

The same disease is now spreading to all fields. Is it going to destroy our civilization?

God help us.