Lance Morrow’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is not particularly uplifting but, at least to me, it has the ring of truth:
The essence of the case against Donald Trump: A democracy can’t be entrusted to an autocrat, especially one as unprincipled and unstable as he. He believes in the democratic process only when it affirms him and his sovereign ego. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot proved that. He is uniquely uncouth—barbarian, vulgarian, choose your word—and addicted to telling lies. He heads the vast MAGA cult of personality, and in that he resembles, say, Hong Xiuquan, who led the Taiping rebellion that devastated Qing Dynasty China in the 19th century. Hong believed himself to be the son of God, younger brother of Jesus Christ. Mr. Trump seems to be laboring under a similar delusion. So his enemies say.
The argument against Kamala Harris: Until the day before yesterday, almost everyone agreed she was a mediocre vice president. She was Joe Biden’s insurance policy. No one, the argument went, would want him to quit the presidency and leave it in the hands of such an empty suit.
Now, incredibly, she is Wonder Woman, high priestess of the Politics of Joy, a daughter of Jamaica and India come to rescue reactionary white America from itself. The Democrats in a few short weeks have mustered their own cult of personality around Ms. Harris, transfiguring the erstwhile hack into a world-historical heroine. Never has the power of spontaneous 21st-century image-spinning been so gloriously demonstrated.
The negative version goes deeper. If Mr. Trump is an autocrat, the entire Democratic program, as reposed in Ms. Harris, is also sinister and dictatorial. It has profoundly autocratic tendencies. Despite the Norman Rockwell pageantry of the Democrats’ convention in Chicago, the party, especially with the old San Francisco lefty Ms. Harris in the Oval Office, could be expected to impose the intolerant, ideological coercions and absolutism of what might be called the horribly virtuous. It would be cancel culture times 10. Her recent interview on CNN made clear that a President Harris would continue all Biden policies: on taxes, the border, Israel, Iran. Same policies, probably further to the left. So say Ms. Harris’s enemies.
He continues with a sunnier view of Trump:
He is a genuine though obnoxious patriot, whose policies on immigration, the economy, Russia, China and the Middle East would be stronger, more decisive and more credible than the weak, ambivalent performance of the Biden-Harris team. Mr. Trump, however much one might wonder at his bizarreness and bad manners, would be better for the country because his views are arguably more in sync with those of the American people. Simple as that.
and then of Harris:
She may, in truth, be an American miracle. The country has always been the story of a sequence of self-transcendences—of breakthroughs and evolutions. Think of the Jacksonian populism that empowered the people beyond the mountains, introducing a newer and wider vision of America. Think of the Civil War, which at great cost transformed the country. Or of the stupendous flood of immigration in the second half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. Or of the New Deal. Or of the 1960s, which introduced such seismic changes.
Perhaps it is true that Ms. Harris represents a breakthrough, a new evolution, a new future. Maybe she has been sent by America’s special providence to rescue the country from a spent generation of leaders, to tell the world: This is no country for old men.
I think the optimistic view of Vice President Harris is vanishingly unlikely. What I think is closer to the truth is that the Democratic Party leadership is oligarchic (with themselves as the oligarchs) and they find her acceptable because they’re convinced that she’ll do as she’s told. If she doesn’t they’ll jettison her as quickly as they jettisoned President Biden when they realized he threatened their continued rule.
I do not believe there has been a presidential election in my lifetime with two such lousy candidates. Voting for the lesser evil is still evil.
“What I think is closer to the truth is that the Democratic Party leadership is oligarchic (with themselves as the oligarchs) and they find her acceptable because they’re convinced that she’ll do as she’s told..”
Of course.
“He is a genuine though obnoxious patriot, whose policies on immigration, the economy, Russia, China and the Middle East would be stronger, more decisive and more credible than the weak, ambivalent performance of the Biden-Harris team. Mr. Trump, however much one might wonder at his bizarreness and bad manners, would be better for the country because his views are arguably more in sync with those of the American people. “
Of course. But then we get back to, “if elected, I will eat you…”
“I do not believe there has been a presidential election in my lifetime with two such lousy candidates. Voting for the lesser evil is still evil.”
Of course on sentence 1. I think sentence 2 is overwrought. You have taken far milder stances on the notion of evil in the past. Perhaps better: between Scylla and Charybdis. Or between the horns of a dilemma.
It is hard to imagine any sizable group being able to say after a Harris Administration “I am better off.’ The empirical evidence on Trump is different.
Who are our rulers? Is the President really some old guy sitting on a porch in Missouri? Will the masks finally come off?
The appointment of Harris, sans votes or voters, sans delegates, sans debate, signals the end of the American Experiment. Who appointed her? We may never know.
Trump is a genuine patriot? Guy loses all credibility here. Trump cares about Trump. He might act out his cartoonish impression of a patriot if it will gain him votes. His views are in sync with his voters, not most Americans. Also, I really dont get this idea about Biden being booted. After all you wrote about how he needed to go you are now complaining about his being booted, of which there really isn’t a lot of evidence.
Harris is a bit of a cipher. That’s kind of true of most past senators. To date it looks like she is floating ideas then pulling them back if they get a lot of negative feedback. As with fracking, she so far she seems to be pulling back from the more radical left stuff.
Steve
This is the most important election of our lifetime, and it will be the end of American democracy if Harris wins, or is it Trump? I am so confused. Where do I send money. Lots of money.
Harris is not a cipher.
She’s an ambitious self promoting politician whose political views allign with whomever she wants to impress at the moment and situation.
Her skills include shameless flirtation and pitiless ridicule which when displayed in rapid succession repeatedly for 90 minutes can be tiresome or nauseating.
Depending on your political bent.