The potential slate of Democrat Party nominees for next years’ presidential election is down by one, as of last week with Kamala Harris withdrawing from consideration. I thought she would hold out a bit longer, appearing to be electorally ballot-proof, as a woman of (at a long squint) color, privileged (not to say exotic) upbringing, and reliably progressive inclinations, plus the establishment national media were already giving her the ‘buffed lightly with a flannel cloth as she is a luminous pearl’ treatment that had been previously administered to Barak Obama.
Alas; it soon became flamingly obvious that she could not think on her feet or come out with anything other than pre-programmed utterances or staged mini-dramas like the ‘I was that little girl!’ made-for-political commercial schtick. Kamala was and is a kind of political Chatty Cathy doll, come to think of it. Pull the string, get the pre-programmed response; which apparently did very well in the hermetically sealed political environment of a one-party progressive state like California, but not where she would be asked to respond to questions that had not been pre-screened, pre-focus-grouped or pre-planted like so many rows of garden beans. And the fact that she started her career in politics by being Willie Brown’s girlfriend for a time; he a married man and twice her age, and a kingmaker in state politics. Oh, yeah it’s bad enough to be told you, as a woman, ought in the name of sisterhood, to vote for another woman because she was married to a prominent politico; it’s really insulting to be told to do so because she only serviced him sexually. So, I thought we might actually be stuck with her for a bit longer; but I guess the private focus groups and polls to which her campaign had access were really disastrous for her national ambitions. Too bad, too sad, Kamala. Buh-bye.
There does seem to be a rear-guard to her abortive campaign, insisting with a lot of posing and flexing, that America is as a whole just to raaaaacist and sexist to vote for a strong black woman, to which I extend a large Bronx cheer. Yeah, sure and where did we see a variant of that line? When any criticism of Barack the Anointed and his policies was painted as being motivated solely and maliciously by virulent racism on the part of those making the criticisms. And of course, the reason that the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua did not ascend to the White House throne of tin was that an overwhelming number of voters just can’t handle the thought of a “strong, independent womyn” as President. Seriously, I’m beginning to believe the best ever reason for considering white heterosexual men for any position of authority is the fact that they can be criticized and replaced without going through this farrago of blaming criticism of them on racism and misogyny.
This may be the only reason that Joe Biden has the slimmest, narrowest, microscopic ghost of a chance of securing the Dem party nomination, incipient senility aside. Is an old, white, heterosexual male the last best chance for the Democrat Party? Discuss as you can bear it.
I view Kamala as simply a political opportunists. She only recently took over Barbara Boxer’s seat and then runs for the Presidency. Sort of Obamaesque, I guess.
Then tries to portray herself as a downtrodden black despite her family’s prominence in Jamaica.
Anyway it is hard to predict with this field. Thew hard left holds such a sway over the Democratic party these days.
Slo-Joe might make it and i think Trump will eat him alive.
Amazing to me the chutzpah – gall? – hubris – he has towards the questioning of his son Hunter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnTQ8EzShuQ
Oh, definitely an opportunist. She went as far as she could in the rarefied political world in California, but once she got out where candidates like Tulsi Gabbard played hard-ball, everyone saw that she had no sand in her character.
And Joe will not fare well against Trump, even if that squealing corpulent sow Candy Crowley or someone of her ilk moderates the debate between them.
The fact that new Dems even now keep declaring they’re running for President, only to disappear without making an impact (Deval Patrick, seriously? Michael Bloomberg, really?), is very, very odd. I have no idea what to make of it, other than to wonder what the party rules are if there’s a contested convention.
My daughter thinks that it is rather like the old-line Soviet leadership – anyone with a smidgen of competence and charisma got squashed, so there were the iron-fisted geriatrics at the top … and a bevy of charmless, talent-free nonentities at the lowest level, and no one much in between.
One of my evergreen sayings: “Vote Republican — it’s the only way to get to press to do their job!”
“…farrago…” Great to see that word thanks. I don’t know/care about the rest of the column/donk candidates ;)
Actually, now that I think about it, we somehow had one of the “debates” on in the background while doing other things and Kamala came on (we had no idea who she was) and my wife spoke up and said “seems like a b1tch”. I just looked at her and said “yep”.
1) Sarge, your daughter is right.
2) This Caucasian Cluster Copulation [the round-eye equivalent of what are referred to as our fire drills] of a Democrat nomination process is probably being set up so that the Party Nomenklatura can select the candidate at the convention without it being someone exposed to the public ahead of time in the messy primary process.
3) The Horowitz Report came out today. Short form, the Organs of State Security left the pooch, the housecat, 3 horses, and a rhinoceros walking bow-legged in how badly the FISA warrant process was abused. But everybody meant well and therefore no one should be held accountable.
That kinda means that neither votes, nor courts, nor the Constitution is going to be involved deciding who runs next. One gets the feeling that we are approaching a river called the Rubicon.
Subotai Bahadur
Pretty much, SB. We’re … no, strike that … the Dems are gonna be presented with a last-minute miracle walk-on nominee, whose path is going to be strewn with rose petals and palm leaves. Who is going to be that miracle nom? Place your bets, gentlemen, place your bets.
Like I was hinting at above…”I have no idea what to make of it, other than to wonder what the party rules are if there’s a contested convention.”
I kind of have to think that, as insane as it sounds, it will be Hillary, no?
My guess is the plan probably involves:
1. Impeachment
2. NY indicting Trump business and family members, and trying to indict Trump himself, though judges will probably stop that
3. Numerous last-minute Blasey-Ford-esque accusations against Trump
4. “Hillary beat him once, she can beat him again!”
I don’t think Michelle O is viable, without any prep, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. I can’t imagine she’d want to run an actual campaign, but a last minute coronation seems right up her alley. I honestly don’t think she could win, though, but if the Dems can weaken Trump with steps 1-3 above so that polling suggests she could, I wouldn’t completely rule it out.
Other than those two, I don’t see any other possibilities. Pretty pathetic what our political class is reduced to–billionaires and wanna-be Evitas.
For more than a few months I have considered at least plausible the idea that the impeachment gambit happened for one or both of two reasons: 1) protect some prominent people from prison (mostly Donks, with Hillary among them); 2) pave the way for a Hillary coup at the Donk convention. Nah, neither could be the case. Too incredible, even more so than the impeachment idiocy…
Meanwhile, can’t ignore the hints:
https://disrn.com/news/hillary-clinton-is-the-top-choice-for-democratic-voters-in-new-poll
Sgt. Mom,
What Tulsi Gabbard did to Kamala Harris was cut off the path upward of of all future Democrat State Attorney General’s from their position to the Federal Presidency.
Democrats cannot stand the thought of State Attorney General’s doing their job of administering the criminal codes and putting criminals in jail.
Tulsi Gabbard set a precedent for how all future Democratic Presidential candidate will take out Democratic party opponents with a background as a State Attorney General
The long term damage that is going to do to The Democratic Party executive branch candidate development is hard to understate.
Subotai Bahadur
Regards this:
>>…But everybody meant well and therefore no one should be held accountable.
>>That kinda means that neither votes, nor courts, nor the Constitution is going to be involved deciding who runs next. One gets the feeling that we are approaching a river called the Rubicon.
I hate it when Kirk Schlichter is right.
It is no longer a question of “IF” this is going “kinetic”
It is a question of “When” and “By What means.”
The recent OAN report on American Senate elites connections to Ukraine corruption is very much like the Killing of Osama Bin Laden inside a Pakistani ISI compound in that neighborhood of Pakistani elites.
The Obama Administration assassination was a strategic victory in that it was an undeniable “Teachable Moment” as to who and what the ISI and the Pakistani military are…an allies of terrorists.
Similarly the OAN Ukraine report has outed elected Congressmen & Senators as paid agents of foreign powers, not representatives of the American People. (I’m looking at you Senator Graham (R-Ukrainian Money)
This cannot be fixed short of every Congressman and Senator being removed _simultaneously_.
And that outcome cannot be accomplished by peaceful means.
She’s stopped running for the top position, but Kamala will be the VP choice because she fills a demographic slot the Left wishes to fill.
(And it sure won’t be Tulsi.)
What is the Dem’s end game? Have they (Nancy and Chuck) written off next year’s POTUS race because (1) impeachment isn’t flying, (2) Durham will tear both parties apart but mostly the D’s, and (3) they’re stuck with a losing slate of POTUS candidates?
Is that why they’re bitterly clinging to impeachment? Will it help them in either the House or Senate next year? Or are they setting themselves up for a 2006-type takeover of both houses in 2022 and the presidency in 2024?
Now I’m reading reports that the impeachment articles aren’t going to include bribery, extortion, collusion, or any of the rest of the stuff that has been making headlines for the last three years and two months. They’ll be limited to Abuse of Office and Obstruction of Congress i.e. he was elected, instead of Hillary.
What we’re witnessing here is the slow-motion suicide of the Establishment, both Democrats and Republicans.
Nobody believes these asses, any more. It’s like when you read a novel or see a movie; there has to be enough credibility there for you to willingly suspend your disbelief, and when you start to hear the OAN guys talking about Lindsay Graham and Ukraine, plus all the other parasites…? Yeah; there’s a reason that the phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” has become our time’s version of “Kilroy was here”.
Where this goes, I don’t know–But, the elites are screwing themselves out of power, either knowingly or unknowingly. Multi-million dollar book deals, tie-ins with Netflix, purchase of multi-million dollar vacation homes on Martha’s Vineyard…? Oh, sure, you betcha… “Scandal-free”, my ass.
We’re either already in, or heading towards unexplored territory: What happens in a nation like the United States, when the elites finally utterly discredit themselves with the general public? And, doing so under conditions of prosperity, with no major war defeats?
I’m here to tell you, the strangest thing about all this is observing the cynicism and rolling eyes among the masses, every time someone brings the scandal of the day up: Prince Andrew? Epstein? Trump’s supposed malfeasance? Just about anything the mass media comes up with…? It is to laugh, and laugh hard–Nobody believes the BS any more.
It is also interesting to hear the voices coming out from beneath the woodwork in liberal enclaves like Seattle–People are starting to lose their belief in the faith system of liberal government. They don’t like living cheek-to-jowl with homeless drug addicts that litter the streets with injection needles and human feces, and you can feel a disturbing upwelling of outright murderous intent from some of them. I don’t know where that goes, because the same idiots who you hear talking about hiring the local gang-bangers to take the homeless out on one-way trips to the woods around Seattle are also the same idiots who want the programs of the socialists. It’s like there’s a wall running down the center of their psyches, where on one side it’s all “Fight for Fifteen”, and on the other, they’re starting to come around to the idea of hauling off the homeless like so much human garbage, putting them in impromptu landfills out in the country.
I will bet large-ish money that at some point in the near-term future, we’re gonna hear about a situation where some liberally-minded business or tenant/homeowner association in one of these West-coast enclaves has gone over off into the deep end, and engaged the services of the local criminal element to either drive off or eliminate the homeless drug addict problem.
I’d further wager that the odds are pretty good that they’re gonna start scooping these human dregs up, and dumping them out where they’re almost certain to freeze to death in the surrounding forest areas. I almost want to call up the various Forest Service and National Park agencies and warn them, but I don’t think they’re gonna take me seriously until it happens. Once it does, I suspect it will become a relatively common solution, informally adopted. Drunk defecating in front of your property…? Call up Miklos, your local Ukrainian hard guy for hire, and have said drunk “dropped off” fifty miles into the mountains some late November evening. Nature will take its course. Odds are, you won’t hear about him again until spring, if anyone ever even finds the body.
They already do it with pets. It’s gonna occur to someone that the solution could also be applied to “difficult, problematic people”, kinda like the reputed solution to the aged followed by the Inuit. Homeless of Seattle, meet freezing forest…
Democrat nomination process is probably being set up so that the Party Nomenklatura can select the candidate at the convention without it being someone exposed to the public ahead of time in the messy primary process.
Agree. It was much that way in 2016 and I agree that Hillary may well end up the nominee.
The impeachment articles surprised me a bit as I expected 5 or 6 so the the members from red districts could vote no on one or two and say they voted against impeachment. I guess this is loyalty test time.
I am just not sure they will get a majority. The articles had to be focus group tested and bribery failed the test.
What happens next year is unknown but could get “kinetic” in a big way.
Au lanterne, as the French say.
The reason the Democrats don’t have any viable candidates today is because Hillary’s machine spent several years kneecapping anyone with potential to stand against her. So when she lost, the Democrats didn’t have anyone to fall back on. It shows.
As far as the sham-peachment goes, I think Pelosi realizes the above and has already written off the next election. So what she’s trying to do is utilize the “ratchet effect” in DC (the inexorable creep to the Left) to add quite a few clicks to the ratchet before the Dems lose power. Another way of saying this, she’s trying to move the Overton window using a Hail Mary play.
Kneecapped by Tulsi Gabbard, one of the people who could save your country.
Here’s a conspiracy theory for you. The Democrats realize they are getting a socialist candidate and rather than have that happen they are throwing the election to Trump. They know impeachment will fail and most probably cause Trump’s reelection. ;)
Kirk,
I’ve been proposing a mass murder of the junkies for a while. I’m pretty sure I’m not socialist.
Zinn was right in saying that the indians were treated in ways that we would not be comfortable treating them now. Okay, sure, he said it in lies, and totally distorted the context, but there was a sliver of correct. The indians back then would not or could not behave in ways that would permit Americans to treat them as if they were inside the fundamental American compromise. So the Americans killed them until the survivors were willing and able to take part in that compromise.
During the early/mid twentieth century, a false consciousness arose or was created that concluded that the benefits of being party to that compromise should be extended to all, regardless of whether behavior was compatible with that compromise or not. This is basically part of the feeling behind social security, and a bunch of other programs.
Immigration would not be a problem, if it were not coming with a) being party to so many entangling deals b) people not prepared to adopt the culture of the American compromise c) lack of punishment promoting a surplus of people unwilling to behave in ways compatible with the fundamental compromise. The druggie sub culture developing since, say, the sixties, and the overlap with mentally ill homeless since the de-institutionalization, are also a wee bit incompatible and stressing people who just want the compromise to work. So how will that stress out?
Three models for what you see. First is how I understand the alt-Right. People raised in leftism, wholly innocent of real conservative thought, and looking for an idea of how to believe and behave when forced to leave the left. Second possibility, is that we may be seeing a breakdown of the ‘false consciousness’, and may revert to prior behavior of punishing those outside the compromise. Third is breakdown of the compromise.
And Joe will not fare well against Trump, even if that squealing corpulent sow Candy Crowley or someone of her ilk moderates the debate between them.
First, I stand in awe of your characterization of Candy Crowley.
That being said, even if Trump should agree to having an Crowleyesque apparatchik as “moderator,” it’s doubtful that the Democrats would try the same stunt that they pulled on Romney. It was acting on the level of a poor middle school Christmas pageant when Obama confidently urged Crowley to “go to the transcript,” stupidly making clear that he knew she had the transcript, while Crowley unconvincingly pretended that, by sheet good fortune, she did indeed happen to have the apposite transcript immediately to hand.
Really? What other transcripts did she have to hand? Her lectern would have been groaning under the weight of the transcripts of Obama’s public pronouncements. It was painfully obvious that the whole interaction was contrived.
Now imagine Trump in the same situation. What would he do? I have no idea, but suffice it to say, it is unlikely it would have played out the same way, and very likely to have played out in an epic fashion.
And for that reason alone, the Dems are unlikely to try the same shabby stunt.
My suggestion: have three moderators, one from each candidate, posing questions to the opposing candidate, with the third moderator there merely to keep candidates to time. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about candidates being primed with the debate questions, and other malfeasance.
other than to wonder what the party rules are if there’s a contested convention.
Same as they have always been, and, as of the last election, were forced to admit in court — Whomever the Elite of the DN Committee want to be there.
One of my evergreen sayings: “Vote Republican ”” it’s the only way to get to press to do their job!”
I was of that opinion. Now they seem to think it’s their job to examine The President’s condiment dispensers…
:-/
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-salt-and-pepper-shakers-are-massive-photos-2019-12
SMH.